The big debtor is the Bulgarian prosecutor's office, former Interior Minister Emil Dechev told the Bulgarian National Radio.
"The prosecutor's office did nothing significant to understand the truth both with regard to the "Eight Dwarfs" group, led by Petyo Euroto, and did nothing serious to investigate the second group - for brokerage and influence in the judicial system - the group of Martin Bozanov - The Notary. When there is such inaction and the objective truth is not discovered, this gives various individuals the opportunity to speculate and use what happened for certain purposes," he explained.
As Interior Minister, Dechev had to respond to a request under the Access to Public Information Act about whether Desislava Atanasova had flown in a certain period of time, as well as whether she had been with certain individuals, public figures, including Delyan Peevski. From the report from the "Border Police" Directorate General, which he received, it is clear that from April 2023 to April 2026, she had flown to Istanbul twice. However, there were no other public figures on her flights, including Delyan Peevski, as indicated by the "Border Police", Dechev explained in the program "Predi visi".
"What the current Minister of the Interior is presenting as information contradicts what I received from the "Border Police" at the time. There is no way that both reports, containing contradictory data, can be true at the same time. This is very worrying," he emphasized and expressed hope:
"I strongly hope that the inspection ordered by the Minister of the Interior Demerdzhiev, which must be carried out by the "Internal Security" Directorate, will establish what these contradictions are due to, whether there have been violations of the law by employees of the "Border Police" or another state institution - not only violations of the law, but even committed crimes".
""Border Police" keeps data on persons leaving the Bulgarian border, but it has no information about who is flying on the plane itself. Demerdzhiev used information from another structure of the Ministry of Interior - GDBOP, which provided him with data with the list of persons traveling on the plane. From there, Demerdzhiev drew his conclusions - that these two persons - Atanasova and Peevski, flew on the same private plane", explained Dechev. And added:
"We have to wait for the "Internal Security" Directorate to conduct its investigation and submit a report on what the contradictions are due to. Until then, we will be forced to make only speculations and assumptions. Things cannot be left like this. The truth must be clarified and if there are guilty individuals who manipulated data, disciplinary proceedings must be initiated against them, and if there is a crime - pre-trial and criminal proceedings, respectively".
Demerdzhiev claims that Atanasova used two passports - personal and diplomatic, the former interior minister also reminded. According to him, the question arises as to why she flew with a diplomatic passport if she did not have an official visit. According to him, for a private visit it is appropriate to use a personal passport.
The former interior minister believes that Kalin Stoyanov's statement on the subject sounds quite serious and would create a problem if it cannot be confirmed with facts and documents.
The information in the PNR data is not identical to that collected by the RRC, he emphasized.
"So far, we do not know and probably no pre-trial proceedings have been initiated against Delyan Peevski. In order for there to be one, certain steps must have been taken for his immunity. But it must be borne in mind that there may be some, I suppose, operational development. It could be related, for example, to money laundering, corruption, financing of terrorism. Years ago, it was publicly announced that Peevski was banned from traveling to Turkey. Information was publicly announced that there was a report by Turkish customs intelligence that cigarettes produced by "Bulgartabac" were smuggled into Syria and Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan, where the Islamic State and the PKK, declared by the Turkish state and other countries as terrorist, were responsible for these channels.
According to him, the impression will most likely remain in society that there is an umbrella and it opens and closes depending on who is in power.
"When the leader of a parliamentary party and another person who until recently was also the leader of the parliamentary group of another party, and who has recently become a constitutional judge, travel on the same plane - this is not only a personal, intimate problem or information affecting the personal sphere, but this information also has public significance, because these two people are not just private individuals who decided to travel together on the same plane, if this is true. If this is true - this is not only their private sphere. One has been a factor in Bulgarian politics for over 2 decades, the other - also determined the decisions made by her parliamentary group, and after she became a constitutional judge, she had to make decisions on complaints from the parliamentary group of the other person we are talking about. There is no way this can remain just their personal issue, it has enormous public importance", Emil Dechev was categorical.
According to him, it depends on Atanasova herself whether she believes that she has somehow tarnished the prestige of the Constitutional Court and whether this morally obliges her to resign or not.
He added that Peevski was obliged to declare all trips:
"If he did not do so, this is a violation of our legislation. If we have an active prosecutor's office, it must establish where this money came from, is it possible that this constitutes a crime - for example, money laundering, why this money was paid, who owns the private plane. Things depend on whether we have a truly functioning prosecutor's office that is ready to take on the investigation of the case".
Regarding the actions of the ruling party in the judicial sphere, Dechev expressed his opinion:
"If that's how they think about making changes - only if they are approved from within the judicial system, we won't get anywhere and nothing good awaits us. We already have a permanently created layer of judges, prosecutors and investigators within the judicial system, which has a completely different agenda from Bulgarian society, it has completely different feelings about how we live, do we have justice, does the state function well, does it need reforms. If only the voices from within are listened to and reforms are made only when the voices from within the judicial system agree with this - for me this is going down the wrong path.
Emil Dechev announced that he was not called in for any of the preliminary investigations for his actions to have explanations taken from him by a prosecutor.
"I have no idea what is happening with these preliminary investigations. Something is going on".
"They are constantly accusing me of something. I have no such plans at the moment," he also said.