“This is an attempt to make a purely criminal case political for pre-election purposes,” said President Rumen Radev in a comment on the investigations into the National Customs Agency and the Secretary General of the Interior Ministry Zhivko Kotsev.

• National Customs Agency head Petya Bankova detained for 72 hours
• Chief Secretary of Interior Ministry withdraws his resignation
• Nikolai Denkov files report against acting chief prosecutor Borislav Sarafov

Talking about the compromising photographs of a former interior minister and the current secretary general of the Interior Ministry together with persons under investigation for smuggling that were leaked to the press, the president said: “What kind of Interior Ministry secretary general can you be if you don’t know who you are going to luxury resorts with, who you are entering a sauna naked with, who you are getting expensive gifts from?” The president congratulated the chair of the State Agency for National Security (SANS) Plamen Tonchev and the agency staff on the courage to investigate the highest administrative levels. “Imagine, if last year I had yielded to the hysteria and had dismissed Plamen Tonchev, now we would know nothing about these outrages,” the president said.