'Mobster provided prostitutes for Israeli diplomats'
Leader of Bulgaria's ultra-nationalist party claims staff of Israeli embassy in Sofia received prostitutes from organized crime head. Embassy in response says Volen Siderov 'racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli'
Israeli embassy in Sofia under verbal attack. Volen Siderov, leader of Bulgaria's ultra-nationalist Ataka party, said in a television interview that a jailed organized crime head provided foreign diplomats, including Israeli embassy employees, with prostitutes.
Siderov said Alexei Petrov, who was arrested in February on charges of organized crime, had a relationship with Israeli diplomats in Bulgaria, and provided them with prostitutes.
Petrov, a former undercover agent for the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (SANS), allegedly received in exchange intelligence and bolstered his ties with state officials. Siderov said Petrov also held ties with other Israelis.
The Israeli embassy in Bulgaria was outraged by the accusations and said in a statement: "Ataka's leader has proven quite consistently his racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli feelings and does not miss an opportunity to 'discover facts' and 'hidden truths' which match his understandings, conspiracy theories and claims for the participation of Jews or Israel in the world's greatest wrongdoings."
"It is a pity that a progressive and civilized country as Bulgaria has someone like Volen Siderov as a party leader and member of Parliament. The embassy of the State of Israel hopes, and wants to believe, that the people of Bulgaria are capable of making a proper judgment and distinction between reality and phobia," it added.
