Discovered in mid-March 2021, a group with the participation of active officers from the “Military Intelligence” service, a director from the Ministry of Defense, a leading official in the administration of the National Assembly was handed over to court by the Military District Prosecutor’s Office-Sofia. This is clear from an official announcement of the state prosecution.
It is understood from it that the Military Prosecutor’s Office has re-submitted an indictment to the Sofia Military Court in a case for crimes committed under Chapter One of the Special Part of the Criminal Code (Crimes against the Republic). Six persons were brought to court. They are prosecuted for being members of an espionage group, for collecting for the purpose of releasing to a foreign state information constituting a state secret, and for placing themselves in the service of a foreign state to serve as spies. According to the evidence collected during the pre-trial proceedings, three of the persons disseminated foreign classified information of a military nature.
An unprecedented event since 1944″, “an unprecedented case”, a story that can only be compared to the discovery of the so-called Cambridge Five”.
As the leader of the group, a former responsible officer in the military intelligence was handed over to the court. For years, he has selected individuals holding key positions with access to classified information of the Republic of Bulgaria and its NATO and EU partners. Members of the group used their positions to gather classified, classified, and other material information of foreign intelligence interest and, for a fee, pass the information on to the group’s leader. Subsequently, he and his wife provided it to an employee from the embassy of a foreign country in the city of Sofia, the prosecutor’s office now says.
A significant amount of evidence was collected during the pre-trial proceedings. Computer-technical, dactyloscopic, handwriting, face-identification, etc. tests were carried out. examinations.
The court is yet to schedule a hearing on the case.
“NOW” REMINDER:
The prosecutor’s office announced that it had uncovered the group in March 2021. The then chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev announced at the time that the espionage affair was unprecedented for Bulgaria and was born only with the Cambridge Five – a more Bulgarian version of the legendary case of five British students recruited by USSR in the 1930s.
Then the state prosecution released video footage and audio recordings of meetings between the suspects, and the attorney general announced that the exposed affair was unprecedented since World War II.
“Participants in the group took advantage of their positions to collect classified, official and other material information of interest to foreign intelligence. They, for a fee, passed the information to the head of the group, which was provided by him and his wife to an official in the embassy of the foreign country in the city of Sofia”, claimed the military prosecutor’s office.
According to the indictment, a 74-year-old former head of the Bulgarian military intelligence, who completed school in the Russian GRU before 1989, formed and led a 6-member spy group. That is why the prosecutor’s office gives him the code Resident. The group also includes the resident’s wife, his former subordinate and current head of the secret office of the Bulgarian parliament, deputy director of the budget directorate of the Ministry of Defense, as well as two active employees of the “Military Intelligence” service.
Espionage is among the oldest professions. The art of gathering confidential information about one’s friend and foe is still practiced in full force today, although the act of espionage is severely punished.
Although the members of the alleged spy group were brought to court as early as November of this year, the case was dropped a few months later, in March, after the Sofia Military Court accepted that the prosecution committed procedural violations in the pre-trial proceedings, which threatened the right of defense of the accused. This was subsequently confirmed by the Military Court of Appeals, which also terminated the legal proceedings on the “unseen” espionage affair.
Now the prosecutor’s office is trying for the second time to bring the group to court.
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2024-02-14 22:59:29
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