The General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP) will carry out an inspection of individuals who organized a "Telegram" channel for selling answers to matriculation exams and, if evidence of a crime is found, will hand them over to the prosecutor's office. This is clear from a response by the Minister of Interior Daniel Mitov in response to a question from MP Elisaveta Belobradova (PP-DB).
The question comes as a result of a received signal to Belobradova, which states that for the fourth consecutive year there is a group in the Telegram application where the purchase of answers to matriculation exams after 7th, 10th and 12th grades is offered. The group's creators claim that they receive the answers from members of the committee that prepares the exam.
Answers to one exam must be paid 200 leva, and for two - 300 leva.
Payment is made via EasyPay, Revolut or Econt, and it is through these payment methods that the person behind the channel will be sought. However, the group can only be removed by the application administrators.
The exam options are randomly drawn the morning before the start of the exam in the presence of the media, and are generated from millions of possible combinations. The individual modules are sent to schools immediately before the start of each part.
The student's opportunities to leave the exam hall are minimized - if the module lasts 60 or 90 minutes, exit is not allowed, and for longer modules, exit is allowed after the first 90 minutes. This should rule out the possibility of leaking the topics before the exam, but almost every year there are cases in which journalists have made successful attempts to buy answers.
The current system with the generation of separate modules was introduced after a BNT reporter bought the correct answers in 2016, and the police discovered and detained two people. However, last year there were also suspicions of a leak, again after a journalist bought the answers and received them 16 minutes after the start of the exam.
The then Minister of Education Galin Tsokov commented that this exact time proves that there was no prior leak from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, because with the start of the exam the information becomes available to about 13,000 examiners. In 2023, a team from "Nova TV" also managed to buy 35 out of 40 answers.