After we all witnessed the unusually bloated presidential motorcade, with which the whole of Varna was paralyzed on August 10, 2025, the questions about the NSO and especially about the people who use its services are becoming more and more numerous.
Raising the topic in the public space gave me the opportunity to be contacted by numerous citizens, including current NSO employees, outraged by the fact that a large part of the president's administration rides in official cars driven by its drivers. This happens even on weekends and holidays, with the cars being used as personal vehicles, including for trips by President Radev's close associates to their hometowns outside Sofia. This is more than scandalous!
This was written on his Facebook page by the former Minister of the Interior, and now an MP from "DPS-New Beginning" Kalin Stoyanov. Here is more from his comment:
In order to check on what legal basis employees of the presidential administration use such specialized transport, I consulted the Law on the National Security Service. As I suspected, this absurdity is hidden between the lines. In Art. 14, para. 1, item 14, the following is written:
Art. 14, para. 1: For the implementation of the functions under Art. 13 and within the limits of its competence, the National Security Service:
item 14: provides transport activities for the administration of the President of the Republic.
Based on this one sentence in the law, the entire administration of the president receives the right to use the cars of the NSO and the drivers of the service. In this way, these persons are equated in privileges with those exhaustively listed in Art. 21 of the law, who are entitled to specialized transport: members of the Council of Ministers, the Constitutional Court, the deputy chairmen of the National Assembly, the chairmen of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court, the mayor of the capital, as well as former chairmen of the National Assembly, prime ministers, presidents and representatives of international organizations.
Taking into account that the NSO is directly subordinate to the president and it is he who approves the structural units and the total number of personnel of the service (Art. 5, para. 1; Art. 6, para. 1 and Art. 7 of the law), it becomes clear why everyone around him rides in NSO cars. In other words, the huge number of employees of “Dondukov“ 2 enjoy the privilege of free transport provided by the state. In practice, President Radev has turned the NSO into a budget-financed taxi company for his own administration. Radev, who constantly talks about theft, robbery and fraud, with one sentence in the law provides daily privileges to his employees at the expense of all Bulgarian citizens.
In connection with the above and in order to eliminate the possibility of the NSO being used as a personal transport company for the presidential administration, we from the DPS-New Beginning, as a responsible political force, are today submitting a draft amendment to the Law on the National Security Service, with which we propose the removal of this point, which allows for uncontrolled abuse of part of the state power.