Minister of Interior Ivan Demerdzhiev was an interlocutor of Ivo Nikodimov in the program "Intervjuto" on BNT.
The guardrail companies and the accusations against Boyko Borisov
Why do you claim that Boyko Borisov is behind the two guardrail companies? What are your reasons for this?
For a number of reasons - the names associated with these companies... The least disturbing fact is that these are two companies that operate in Bulgaria. Two companies that provide huge volumes of supplies, two companies that are included in a huge number of public procurements and maintain prices that, according to the data I have, are much higher than the market prices in neighboring countries countries. So, the very connections of these companies with certain people, allowing them to participate everywhere and profit unhindered, lead us to the conclusion that the people who are actually behind them are quite high up. And finally, in the ranks of these people, I think, is the figure of Boyko Borisov.
Very important for us, apart from who is behind these orders, whether the prices are inflated, who benefited, there is a much more important question - the quality of these barriers, the method of implementation, whether they ensure road safety, and whether it is permissible for a truck that has no load to pass through them unhindered, which could lead to a death on the road.
Since Karadimov from the Commission for the Protection of Competition said that the issue of manipulation of tenders by the participants themselves is also being investigated, do you have data on the way in which a German company participated in tenders and was removed, including from the last one tender?
All large public procurements related to a significant public resource, which, thanks to the system developed by the Ministry of Innovation and Digital Transformation - the public procurement register - are now public.
We have set tasks for all structures to carefully examine these registers, to analyze the public procurements in them based on public information and to identify those for which there are suspicions of manipulation, distortion of results and inflated prices, which create prerequisites for illegal payments. This is also related to advance payments - a rather unhealthy practice. In road construction, there were cases of advance payments. But you cannot pay in advance without even having a project. When you do not have a project, you cannot make a quantitative and value calculation, you cannot value an order.
New data on the search of Pepi Euroto
Why is the search for Pepi Euroto becoming something like a soap opera? Do you currently have data that would be grounds for requesting permission from the court to issue a European arrest warrant?
We have and are collecting more data. This figure is very interesting for the Bulgarian justice system - a symbolic figure. The figure of a person who knows too much about the unhealthy practices that led to the corruption of this system and led to the state that we know today and that Bulgarian citizens are rightly outraged by. So it is very important for us that this data becomes public knowledge, that it becomes available to law enforcement agencies.
Here I will open a parenthesis and recall that the magistrates who appeared in the materials found and available in the GDBOP from the so-called archive of the said Pepi Euroto were listed by us and sent to the Prosecutor General, to the Inspectorate, to the Supreme Judicial Council with the idea of checking their activities, of checking the data that we come across in the archive of the aforementioned Pepi Euroto. We are still waiting for feedback.
The “Baba Alino“ and “Petrohan“ investigations
Have you already clarified the scale of the “Baba Alino“ case and what it is about - a political umbrella over illegal construction or corrupt behavior of people from the local administration in Varna?
Dozens of people were detained, a lot of interrogations were conducted, over 140 thousand pages of written evidence were collected. You know that our employees entered all the addresses known to the KUB corporation or to people or companies associated with it. So all this huge mass of evidence was collected, provided to the prosecutor's office. There was some delay in the work of the prosecutor's office. This forced us to send a team from the Main Directorate "Fighting Organized Crime" there. In turn, the acting Prosecutor General sent supreme prosecutors from the Supreme People's Court. I don't know why they stayed there for only a day, but this also gave an impetus to the process. A very worrying practice was clarified, which concerns the region. This is the practice of issuing tolerance certificates - obviously fake tolerance certificates, which certify illegal construction that does not meet the requirements. But it is disturbing how both local and state authorities have remained silent on this topic until the new cabinet took office now, in early May.
What are your doubts about the investigation of the “Petrohan“ case?
We want to return this case to the terrain of clarifying the facts. And we are doing everything possible from the distance of time – something that makes it very difficult for us. To fill in the missing facts with clarity, to answer the questions of the relatives of the six deceased and the questions posed by society. And there are many of them. I can't rank them, but if I had to start, I'd start with the question: could the lives of at least three of these six people have been saved?
The next questions are whether this is a suicide or a murder, and how this organization managed to establish itself in this territory and operate for so long - obviously with the assistance of state institutions. How was this organization financed? Significant funds passed through their accounts. What was the purpose of this financing? Who provided it? Why did they provide it? Was the law followed in this financing?
I can know what my employees know. They tell me that they know very little because the prosecutor's office closed this case for its own reasons and considerations, which we will understand. And it does not return to the operatives complete information about the evidence collected. These are numerous expert reports and other additional evidence.
We recently had a meeting with one of the relatives, we commented with the Secretary General and I will take such an initiative, with the help of the acting Prosecutor General - to hold a meeting of the operatives and investigators with the prosecutors leading the case, to clarify whether there are any unclear aspects.
Let's not forget that the people who sharply ask me in a parliamentary committee what is being done in this case, also owe answers about what happened, because at that time it was the political forces that they represent that had formed a government, and Daniel Mitov was the Minister of the Interior. The first hours and the first days are crucial and the actions that are taken then or are not taken at the moment determine the success of such an investigation.
Salaries of employees in the Ministry of Internal Affairs
How will their salaries grow and how will their social security contributions be paid - this is certainly something they are concerned about?
We are in constant dialogue with the unions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The government is in a rather difficult situation, thanks to the fact that funds that were supposed to be used for the 2026 budget were spent in advance. Our ambition is to jointly stop the resource leaks within the ministry so that the remainder can allow the issue of remuneration not to be raised. As a relevant minister in the system, I am doing everything possible and I meet understanding among my colleagues and I believe that I will continue to meet it. And what I want from the employees is for their work to be impeccable, for public trust to grow, and for there to be no doubt that the employees of the Interior Ministry deserve their salaries and respect for their work.