High-ranking Bulgarian police officer arrested on suspicion of Russian espionage
A high-ranking official in Bulgaria’s anti-organised crime police service was arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia on Monday.
An official has been arrested and is being monitored by special services, Chief Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Zhivko Kotsev said.
“I confirm that it is a matter of espionage, but at this stage, I will refrain from further comments,” he added, refusing to name the suspect, citing security reasons.
The suspect had been sending official information from his work email to a Russian citizen who had previously worked as a diplomat in Bulgaria but was declared persona non grata for espionage. The suspect offered to “help” the Russian, according to unofficial information from Euractiv’s sources.
The tip-off to the Bulgarian authorities about the suspicious activities of the high-ranking police officer came from an EU and NATO partner service.
Bulgaria is seen as a very risky country for the security of the Eastern flank of NATO because of the old institutional ties with Russia established during the USSR era.
In the last two years, the former government of Kiril Petkov and the current one of Nikolai Denkov have been working purposefully to dismantle the country’s informal dependence on the Kremlin.
At the start of 2021, several people were arrested in Sofia on suspicion of being involved in an espionage group in favour of Russia. Former military intelligence officer Ivan Iliev, called “The Resident” by the investigators, was named the leader.
Among those detained were active employees of the Defence Ministry, which is why the military prosecutor’s office led the investigation, and the suspicion was that those accused of espionage had exported data about the new F-16 Block 70 fighters that Bulgaria ordered from the USA. These fighters share technology with the F-35 stealth fighter.
In June 2022, Bulgaria expelled 70 employees from the Russian embassy who were declared persona non grata. There were other diplomats expelled earlier that year. In 2022, Bulgaria announced that it was investigating its State Agency for National Security employees for espionage in favour of Russia.
The most famous espionage case, which the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office brought to court, is the accusation against the leader of the political movement ‘Russophiles’, Nikolay Malinov, over allegedly spying for Russia and receiving money for it. Malinov received the Order of Friendship award from Putin, a recipient of a Russian order, which was presented to him by Vladimir Putin in the fall of 2021. Last February, he was sanctioned by the US under the Global Magnitsky Act.
The espionage trial against Malinov is in the initial phase in court, and no sentence has been pronounced so far.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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