Brutal murder linked to graft
Police are investigating the rape and slaying of a female television journalist after she reported on the possible misuse of EU funds in Bulgari.
BUCHAREST ( Romania): Police investigating the rape and slaying of a female television reporter whose body was dumped near the Danube River after she reported on the possible misuse of European Union funds in Bulgaria, have a suspect in custody.
Public radio reported yesterday, citing police sources, that a man has been detained as part of the probe into the killing.
“We have detained a man. We’re still checking his alibi so he is not officially a suspect for committing the crime yet,” Ruse police chief commissioner Teodor Atanasov told journalists.
The man – a Romanian – was being held for 24 hours, Atanasov said.
Authorities discovered 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 raped, beaten and strangled, and her body was found in a park near the river.
Marinova was a director of TVN, a small TV station in Ruse, and a TV presenter for two investigative programmes.
Journalists’ groups and foreign officials expressed shock. Harlem Desir, the media freedom representative for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, demanded a “full and thorough investigation” of Marinova’s slaying.
A Bulgarian investigative online media site went further, calling for an independent international inquiry and saying corruption could compromise an investigation by Bulgarian law enforcement.
Bulgarian Interior Minister Mladen Marinov insisted on Monday that there was no evidence to suggest the killing was linked to Marinova’s work. “It is about rape and murder,” he said.
Hundreds of Bulgarians turned out on Monday night for vigils to honour Marinova.
In Ruse, mourners, some tearful, placed candles, her portrait and roses – the national flower – at the foot of a monument.
In the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, mourners gathered outside a church. One participant, Kristina Petkov, said Bulgarians now had “zero” trust in authorities.
“Whatever results the investigation (into Marinova’s death) shows, people won’t believe them,” she said.
Corruption is endemic in Bulgaria, a Balkan nation that joined the EU in 2007 and was ranked 71st on Transparency International’s corruption list last year.
Joining the bloc opened an enormous spigot of possible new EU funding for Bulgarian infrastructure projects or other programmes designed to bring the nation up to EU standards – funds that were very attractive to both government officials and criminal networks. Marinova’s final show on Sept 30 was a programme about Attila Biro, an investigative journalist with the Rise Project Romania, and Dimitar Stoyanov from the Bulgarian investigative site Bivol.bg.
The two men were briefly detained on Sept 13 south of Sofia as they investigated a tip that documents connected to suspected fraud involving EU funds were being destroyed.
Bivol.bg owner Assen Yordanov said he couldn’t directly link Marinova’s slaying to her work, but noted her show tackled “our very sensitive investigation into the misuse of EU funds”.