Former bosses of SANS, intelligence, NGOs become politicians, diplomats, businessmen, high-paid employees in companies, but never – unemployed Bulgarians
Politicians, diplomats, businessmen, teachers, lawyers, highly paid security officers of large companies. This is what the heads of the special services and the Ministry of Interior do when they leave their posts. And this is no accident.
They know a lot about important people in the country. The most confidential information was on their desks. By law, they have no right to disclose it even as free citizens or retirees. But nothing prevents them from doing something else, using the experience and information they have. For them, life goes on. In most cases – too successful. No matter which ruling party they are appointed by and with which they will continue their careers.
In the last month and a half since the caretaker government came to power, three of the most important heads of services have been replaced. These are the Secretary General of the Ministry of Interior Ivaylo Ivanov, the head of the State Intelligence Agency Atanas Atanasov and the chairman of the State Agency for National Security Dimitar Georgiev, who has remained in office for the longest time – 6 years – without precedent in the latest our history.
The difference in the replacement of these generals by the caretaker government was the public disagreement with their removal. Such a thing has not happened with the castlings at the top of the services.
Usually their bosses
they leave quietly, without noise
Ivanov, Atanasov and Georgiev will certainly not stay on the streets or emigrate, which is what the Secretary General of the Ministry of Interior Ivaylo Ivanov thought on his last day in office.
The most mysterious as a rule, but also the most interesting are the former chairmen of SANS, as well as their careers after leaving this structure.
The list is not long. Since the establishment of the mega-agency in 2008 Dimitar Georgiev is the 5th President (we exclude Delyan Peevski, who refused to take office in 2014 due to the protests on the day the National Assembly elected him to office).
Dimitar Georgiev’s predecessor at the highest post in SANS is Vladimir Pisanchev. A career cop, he became deputy chairman of SANS in 2012 in the first cabinet of GERB. The post was then vacated by Ivan Drashkov – Another legendary counterintelligence. After the resignation of GERB, Vladimir Pisanchev not only survived in the Oresharski cabinet of the BSP and MRF, but also became chairman of SANS.
He left in March 2015 due to tensions in the return of GERB to power and the resignation of then Interior Minister Veselin Vuchkov. Pisanchev lost his job for only 6 months. In September of the same year he was appointed Consul General of Bulgaria in Thessaloniki and thus transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then headed by Daniel Mitov. The retired counterintelligence officer has been running the mission there for 6 years. The path of the first chairman of SANS was similar Petko Sertov. He left office in August 2009, when GERB first came to power. Sertov did not wait 6 months as Pisanchev and was immediately sent as consul in Thessaloniki.
In the first months of his new service, however, he exploded in Bulgaria
scandal with the missing
materials from SANS,
when he was in charge of the secret service. Then Boyko Borissov announced that he was losing his trust as a consul, and he was recalled. Again on his native land, Petko Sertov was not unemployed. He was appointed deputy chairman of the Center for the Prevention and Counteraction of Corruption and Organized Crime, a service known as BORCOR, which later merged with KPCONPI.
Quietly, as a true counterintelligence officer, Petko Sertov worked at the center of the government until 2013. He also left this post to become a consultant for the United Energy Traders company, owned by businessman Angel Bozhilov. This fact became public in December 2014, when Sertov mysteriously disappeared and was declared wanted at the request of his relatives. The Ministry of Interior, his former subordinates from SANS and even Interpol joined his search. He was searched by helicopter in his favorite mountains and places in nature, but to no avail.
A little later, information came from Greece, where Sertov was spotted in a hotel. He left it and stayed in the country, where years ago he was consul for a short time. He did not return for almost a month, and the story is still a mystery.
In the final, his wife Emilia went to our southern neighbor and brought him back to Bulgaria. Since then, the former head of SANS has been silent on the issue. Today he is the manager of a plumbing company, but there are no public appearances. The reason for his short escape in 2014 is believed to be the deals of the large energy company, for which he worked as a consultant and which used his skills and experience from the service he headed in 2008 and 2009.
His successor as chairman of SANS Tsvetlin Yovchev has the most fulfilling career after leaving the service. It develops consistently in politics, science and business.
Yovchev left SANS on February 16, 2011 due to the months-long scandal with the SRS, known as “Hello, Vanyo”. Then Prime Minister Borissov several times publicly criticized SANS for not being able to protect records from investigations. However
Yovchev was immediately appointed
for political adviser
office of
the Prime Minister
And so until January 2012, when the then new president Rosen Plevneliev formed his team. Tsvetlin Yovchev also replaced the cabinet of Dondukov 1 with a larger one in the building, because he was appointed to the key position of chief of staff of President Plevneliev. Thus, the former head of SANS remained in big politics for a long time.
Until April 9, 2013, when he left of his own free will. These are troubled times. GERB’s first government has resigned in two months over protests against high electricity prices. Plevneliev has scheduled early elections for May 12th. Yovchev explains his resignation from the presidency with personal projects that he cannot realize with his current post. As a person with information and contacts at the top of the state, Yovchev probably knew that a new government was coming in just a month. And he strikes back at her. Juicy as a GERB man because of his work with Borisov and Plevneliev, Yovchev was appointed Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister in the BSP and MRF cabinet with Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski. This surprises many people, but not those who are dedicated to the secrets of services and politics. With the new political post, Yovchev surpasses that of the chairman of SANS, because he directly controls his old office, in addition to leading the Ministry of Interior.
After the resignation of Oresharski’s cabinet, he did not hold a public office. He is a partner in 2 construction companies and the sole owner of the company “Safe City Security Projects”, which develops and implements projects and systems for security, consulting, information services and, of course, competitive and corporate intelligence.
Apart from large private companies, Yovchev’s company has also been trusted by the state. In February this year Mini Maritsa East AD has paid BGN 29,500 to the company to assess the functionality of the technical security of the enterprise. This year, Yovchev’s company has completed a project as part of a consortium, funded with BGN 2.7 million, to increase transport safety on the Danube. And this area is familiar to the former head of SANS. Before entering counterintelligence in the late 1980s, he worked in merchant shipping.
In addition to the special police officer, senior manager and businessman Yovchev has two other publicly known passions –
the bike you often ride
he moved while he was
Deputy Prime Minister, and Science
As soon as he left SANS in 2011, he began writing a doctorate at the University of Library Science and Information Technology (UniBIT). The university is shrouded in legends about its connections with people from the services and especially with the State Security. Chairman of the General Assembly and long-term rector (until 2018) of the school is Prof. Stoyan Denchev, who was vice president of “Multigroup” and associate of the State Security, and teacher is a living legend Dimitar Ivanov, head of the Sixth Department in the Sixth Department . Exactly under the guidance of the long-time rector of the school Yovchev defended his doctoral dissertation. After that he became an associate professor and scientific secretary at the Institute for Research and Training of Doctoral Students at UniBIT. He teaches in the disciplines “Information Management” and “Internal Security”. For 3 years now, Yovchev has not had time for his teaching activities due to the development of his security company.
He mainly deals with science, again at UniBIT Konstantin Kazakov, who replaced Yovchev as chairman of SANS in 2011, and before that was his deputy. He resigned on May 30, 2013, when Oresharski’s cabinet took power.
Kazakov’s research activities have been going on since 2011. The chairman of the jury that evaluated his works is Tsvetan Semerdzhiev, the son of the former vice president Gen. Atanas Semerdzhiev.
His doctoral dissertation is on “The organizational culture of SANS in a period of transformation.” Today, Kazakov is an associate professor and has already surpassed Yovchev in the academic hierarchy, because in addition to being a lecturer, he is also head of the supervisory board of the university.
Tsvetlin Yovchev and Konstantin Kazakov were counterintelligence agents under the so-called Russian direction as well as the former deputy chairman of SANS Ivan Drashkov, who before the establishment of the mega-agency headed the security service in the Ministry of Interior.
Unlike his successors in counterintelligence, Drashkov did not build a scientific career, but entered the business directly after SANS. He is the owner, partner and manager of companies with various activities. When Yovchev first left the civil service in 2008, he became the owner of the consulting company Regulus Consult, which he transferred to Drashkov on his return to SANS in 2009. It had long since been liquidated.
Expect later what is the fate of the former bosses of DAR
– .
