Bulgaria Prosecution Suspects Six MPs of Corruption

Bulgaria's Prosecutor General, Sotir Tsatsarov, on Thursday said that he had asked the country's parliament to drop the immunity of five opposition MPs and one ruling party deputy to probe them over corruption allegations. 

Three are members of the populist opposition Volya party, led by pharma and fuel retail owner Veselin Mareshki, two are MPs from the main opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party, and one is a ruling GERB deputy.

The three Volya MPs, including party leader Mareshki, are suspected of extorting from other pharmacy owners.

"The indictment concerns Veselin Mareshki in his role as a CEO and co-owner of Pharmanet LTD and Plamen Hristov and Krastina Taskova as regional managers, who threatened pharmacy owners with damaging their property unless they buy medicine and pharmaceutical products only from Pharmanet LTD for uncompetitive prices," the indictment reads.

Mareshki disputed the claims. "They investigated us for extortion for an entire year and they didn't find anything. Now they have decided that the extortion was for an entirely different reason," he said.

He added that he and the other two Volya MPs are considering dropping their immunity voluntarily.

The two Socialist MPs concerned are ex-journalist Elena Doncheva, one of the most outspoken critics of the ruling GERB party and its leader, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, and Georgi Mihaylov, former director of the National Hematology Hospital.

The party immediately announced that both of them would renouncde their immunity. Party leader Kornelia Ninova said they would not be forced out of the parliamentary group of the Socialist Party, BSP, until proven guilty in court.

Yoncheva is sought for allegedly laundering money from the bankrupt Corpbank...