Following a two-hour search operation, police took the leader of the biggest opposition party and former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov to the General Directorate National Police and are holding him in custody for 24 hours.

“No charges have been brought and no charges can be brought because by Bulgarian law, charges can only be pressed by written authorization of a prosecutor,” explained lawyer Menko Menkov after meeting with former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov.  In his words, the grounds for detention are extortion, “though it doesn’t say who has been extorted by Mr. Borissov, when they were extorted, for what or how.”

A large-scale operation of the General Directorate National Police is underway in connection with 120 cases of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bulgaria, the press office of the Ministry of Interior announced. Searches and seizures are being carried out at many locations in Bulgaria.

According to the police, at the moment, besides Boyko Borissov, former Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov and the former head of the government information service Sevdalina Arnaudova have also been detained. Even though initially the Interior Ministry announcement included the name of Menda Stoyanova as being among the persons detained, the former chair of the parliamentary budget committee denied being among the detainees. 

“Nobody is above the law!”, Premier Kiril Petkov wrote on Facebook.

Representatives of GERB’s youth organization, MPs and the leadership of GERB party gathered in front of Boyko Borissov’s home and called the operation “political repression”.  

“Bulgaria's Prosecutor's Office has not been notified about the investigation of political figures", the Spokeswoman of the Prosecutor General’s Office Siyka Mileva said for bTV. In her words, more information should be sought from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

On Thursday, 17 March, Bulgaria’s Minister of Interior Boyko Rashkov held a working meeting with European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kövesi to discuss Bulgaria’s work on establishing a team of investigators in the Ministry of Interior to cooperate on cases of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.