Reporter probing corruption raped and murdered
BULGARIAN police are investigating the rape and killing of a woman television reporter whose body was dumped near the Danube River after she reported on the possible misuse of European Union funds.
Authorities found the body of 30-year-old Viktoria Marinova on Saturday in the northern town of Ruse near the Romanian border.
Police said she had been strangled and her body was found in a park near the river. Ms Marinova was a director of TVN, a small TV station and a TV presenter for two investigative programmes.
Journalists’ groups and foreign officials, including Harlem Desir, the media freedom representative of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, demanded a “full and thorough investigation” into Ms Marinova’s death.
Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said there was no evidence to suggest the killing was linked to Ms Marinova’s work. “It is about rape and murder,” he said.
Bulgarian police, however, said they were considering possible links to both her personal and professional life.
Ms Marinova’s final show was a programme about Attila Biro, an investigative journalist with the Rise Project Romania and a colleague from the Bulgarian investigative site Bivol.bg, Dimitar Stoyanov.
The two men were briefly detained on September 13 south of Sofia, the capital, as they investigated a tip that documents connected to suspected fraud involving EU funds were being shredded and destroyed.
Bivol.bg owner Assen Yordanov noted her September 30 show tackled “our very sensitive investigation into the misuse of EU funds”.
“This is a topic on which no other Bulgarian national media dared to report on,” he said. “We want independent European investigators because we believe the Bulgarian authorities are part of this country’s criminal network.”