Bulgarian PM allegedly tried to “Buy” MPs from “There Is Such a People”

Prime Minister Kiril Petkov met with MPs from "There Is Such a People" (TISP) to persuade them to support the government despite Slavi Trifonov's party's decision to step down from the coalition. The revelations were made today in parliament.

TISP also sharply criticized the draft law on the anti-corruption commission.

Kiril Simeonov, a member of the budget committee, is the first MP to publicly admit that he met with Prime Minister Petkov and was persuaded not to comply with the party's decision to leave office. The conversation took place last night in an office near the Bulgarian National Radio, he explained.

"We had a brief meeting where he offered me absolutely nothing, I'm completely honest - no posts, no money or any such things, we just talked and he told me that if I could reconsider my position so as not to throw the country in chaos, etc.," Simeonov said.

"He told me completely that things can't go on like this. We met near the Bulgarian National Radio, I don't think I know exactly which building it was, but no, not in a restaurant, nor in one of his laboratories, or something like that.

I didn't answer him. I told him I thanked him for the conversation and left. This is it," Kiril Simeonov told reporters.

The chairman of TISP parliamentary group, Toshko Yordanov, said this was not Kiril Petkov's only attempt to split the unity of "There Is Such a People".

"Kiril Petkov is Tatiana Doncheva in pants, he does the same. She offered 500 thousand, he offers a bright future. In both versions, it sounds like corruption to me. Yes, Kiril Petkov spoke with our deputies, not only one, I know about three I think he'll talk to a fourth, but after what we're talking...