Sofia, December 12 (BTA) - Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev said here Sunday that a war is being waged against the Prosecution Service. He was speaking during a news briefing focused on an investigation into money laundering in the project for
construction of Hemus Motorway.

At the news briefing, the prosecution service complained that the Directorate General for Combatting Organized Crime (DGCOC) is trying to pressure prosecutors into accepting a deal with a key defendant in the Hemus probe in exchange for information that would possibly lead to people higher up in the money laundering scheme. Sofia Regional Prosecution Service has even opened a check for that against the DGCOC head.

"Professional differences" or "war"

In a Bulgarian National Radio interview Sunday, Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov described the conflict between prosecutors and DGCOC in this specific case as "professional differences" and said the prosecutors were fanning those out and apparently seek to delay the investigation.

But Geshev disagrees and has much stronger words for it. He said in his long experience in law enforcement, this is the first time he sees such "unprecedented and illegal pressure on prosecutors". "Today it's them, tomorrow it will be the judges,
and the day after it will be you, the news media, or some ordinary citizen whose position bothers someone", Geshev said. He added that this war between the institutions is what criminals want and it would bring about a boom in criminal
activity. "The price of this war will be paid by the Bulgarian citizens," he added.

According to Geshev, "some people totally misunderstand the basic European principles and standards such as the rule of law and the separation of powers". "Bulgarian people must know that we will work only in their interest, we will not fight with anyone but crime," he said.

Sofia Regional Prosecutor Nevena Zartova told BTA that the prosecution service is considering sending DGCOC to a lie detector and might seek assistance from the competent EU institutions for that.

After the news briefing of the prosecution service on the case, the Interior Ministry said that they fear for the life of the key defendant, Borislav Kolev. Also, they said that by saying what they did the prosecution service made public the investigators' tactics in the case.

In a second news briefing on the Hemus case on Sunday, held in reaction to the prosecutors' accusations, the head of the DGCOC, Kalin Stoyanov, denied trying to pressure the prosecutors or behaving in an undue manner. He said that the DGCOC investigators in the case are trying to solve the crime and reach the masterminds - not merely send somebody behind bars, and that the supervising prosecutors on two occasions refused to hear the defendant when he asked to speak to them.

The 42-year-old Kolev was arrested for organizing a scheme in which close to 54 million leva paid by the last GERB government for construction of Hemus Motorway, vanished in an intricate scheme of straw companies. That happened through an in-house contracting procedure at the state-owned road construction company Avomagistrali, which was able to pick without a competition the contractors in the motorway project. From the Avtomagistrali contractors, the money reached the straw
companies and were withdrawn from the bank in bags and sacs, according to witnesses. The straw companies had low-income and uneducated people as nominal owners.

Now Borislav Kolev is in house arrest. Two DGCOC investigators and three supervising prosecutors are working on the case.

In the National Radio interview, Boyko Rashkov reiterated that the Hemus Motorway investigation could affect the composition of "a certain parliamentary group", obviously implying that an MP may lose their immunity and be replaced. He would not say who that MP is or in what parliamentary group.

He was asked whether an arrest should be expected, he said that there is all reason to expect that but whether procedural actions will really be taken depends largely on the prosecution service.

He blasted the prosecution service under Ivan Geshev of deliberately dragging their feet about the Hemus investigation because, as he put it, "its progress would inevitably lead to important figures in the government of the country before April
this year".

In April 2021, the government of GERB and the power-sharing United Patriots served out their term.

GERB have consistently dismissed accusations for wrongdoing under their government as ill-grounded. That was repeated Sunday by Denitsa Sacheva, a former GERB minister, who said on a Bulgarian National Radio political talkshow that none of
Rashkov's accusations have been proven. "It is obvious that there are ways Rashkov could push the Hemus investigation in the direction he wants," she said. MT/LN