The bodies of the Ministry of Interior have taken all measures to ensure the right of citizens to vote freely, as well as to ensure that their vote passes legally. This was announced by Acting Secretary General of the Ministry of Interior Lyubomir Nikolov to journalists, quoted by Dariknews.bg. According to him, 140 operations have been carried out so far, with the actions of the law enforcement agencies being concentrated mainly in Roma neighborhoods and in places that were the subject of attention in previous elections.
As a result of the operations, two pre-trial proceedings have been initiated so far.
„We are working in several aspect – first of all against vote buying and by my order I have ordered preventive checks in all settlements where we observe a high concentration of people engaged in vote buying“, said Nikolov.
The operations are being carried out jointly with teams of the General Directorate “ Gendarmerie and Combating Terrorism“. The Ministry of Interior also ensures the unhindered transportation of voting machines, ballots and election papers to the places where they will be stored, and subsequently to the polling stations.
Serious attention is also being paid to cybersecurity. “We are seriously emphasizing the problem of cyber attacks. We will monitor cyberspace very carefully and with the “ Cybercrime“ Directorate at the General Directorate for the Prevention of Corruption and Corruption, we are monitoring the entire space and we will try to prevent any cyber attack, especially on election day and the day before it“, she said. ex. Secretary General.
According to him, the operations are aimed not only at vote buying, but also at conventional crime and the distribution of drugs.
„Electoral trade and the persons who engage in electoral crimes are calm for the moment. There are many identified places and persons, we work with them constantly, we create warning protocols and all other preventive activities assigned to us in the law of the Ministry of Internal Affairs“, Nikolov pointed out.
He explained that at the moment the Ministry of Internal Affairs has too little data on electoral trade to be able to indicate a specific price for vote buying.
„We have very little practice at this point in electoral trade, so we cannot specify a price for happiness for the moment. Things are calm and we hope they will remain so. I repeat, if we eventually need to react somewhere, to this type of crime, we will do it immediately. The circle that we generally find to be dealing with this type of crime is very narrow, so I hope, I tell you again, that they will remain as they started“, he said.
The operations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs will continue until election day. When asked about the activity of the department compared to the previous leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the previous elections, he said: “We are not that active on TikTok, but we are active in the field and we are acting.“
On the topic of the investigation of threats to institutions sent by email, Nikolov indicated that the work continues jointly with other services, and the FBI is also involved in it. “We are working diligently with the assistance of other services, the FBI is also involved in this problem. And as soon as possible we will receive the necessary information with which to reach specific suspects“, said the acting secretary general.