Bulgarian “Watergate”: Journalists from the Agence France-Presse, Lyuba Kulezich, Dimitar Stoyanov were wiretaped

Along with a case of rebellion and coup led by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office during the anti-government protests in 2020, journalists were also eavesdropped. Among them are the host from TV “Eurocom” Lyuba Kulezich, the investigative journalist Dimitar Stoyanov (Bivol and BRRD) and two journalists from the Agence France-Presse Agency – the head of the Sofia bureau Vesela Sergeva and the photojournalist Nikolay Doychinov. Thus, the wiretapping scandal, called the Bulgarian “Watergate”, also acquires an international dimension.

Data on interception of conversations of journalists with SSDs come out of references published by the Chairman of DG BOETS Georgi Georgiev. He himself was the subject of SSDs under the pseudonym “The Fighter”. Three sheets reflect the telephone names, names, time and content of his conversations with journalists. BRRD contacted AFP journalists, Lyuba Kulezich and Miroslav Mitkov. All of them confirmed that they had such talks with Georgi Georgiev in the specified time period. Another journalist identified by his first name Peter did not return the calls. In our opinion, this is a journalist from the site Fakti.bg.

The published documents lack confidentiality requisites, but there is a request number for the application of SSDs by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office – No77-757/20.07.2020, authorized by the Specialized Criminal Court with permission No 4-1658, as well as the period for which eavesdropping is allowed: 22.07.2020 – 23.11.2020.

In a previous publication BRRD analyzed the data on eavesdropping released by atty. Nikolay Hadzhigenov on BNT, which shows a list of 24 requests for application of SSDs by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office, which are from the period 17.07 – 21.07. 2020 One of these requests is now associated with the site “Boetsa” – Georgi Georgiev and it is in the course of this development that journalists are hooked.

To these 24 operations should be added two more, for which the BRRD has documents with requisites of the services and especially with undeleted metadata that confirm their preparation in the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Interior. These are the requests for application of SSDs No77-889/17.08.2020. against the activist of “Stand Up BG” Tihomir Vasilev – site “Tycho” and request No77-1435 / 21.12.2020 for SSDs against the chairman of the party “Volt” Nastimir Ananiev – site “Nastimir “. These two operations also carry out a large number of people associated with the protests, mainly activists of “Stand Up BG”, but also activists of other formations such as the organization of Gen. Shivikov, Legia “Antimafia” and others.

The documents for Nastimir Ananiev also reveal which is the prosecutor’s file on which the events against him are conducted. It s s number 01425 of 2020, of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office. A check of the BSRD in the system for tracking the status of the files on the PRB’s website found that the file is active at the moment, and materials from another authority are expected, and the last action on the file is from 11.06.2021 – a blank letter to the Sofia Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

It is not known in which pre-trial proceedings the other SSDs were requested and conducted. It is clear, however, that the SSD against Tihomir Vassilev is being led under pre-trial proceedings for an OCG preparing a rebellion and a coup d’état under Art. 95 of the Criminal Code. This was confirmed by Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov, who recalled that this article dates back to 1968 and has not been charged since communist times.

The BRRD also established who are the prosecutors who initiated the pre-trial proceedings and requested the SSDs in question. These are Nikolay Yordanov Popov – son of former Vice President Margarita Popova and Ivan Valeriev Parvanov – son of former Deputy Prosecutor General Valeri Parvanov. Both are district prosecutors in Sofia, but seconded to the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office.

Our reporter contacted Minister Boyko Rashkov by phone, who neither denied nor confirmed that Dimitar Stoyanov was involved in the development of “Boetsa”. He recalled that revealing the names of persons conducting secret documents is a serious crime under the Penal Code and he does not intend to do so, but will pass on the data in his possession to the future committee for control of SSDs in the future parliament.

BRRD recalls that there is a practice to declassify documents with a finger when the public interest requires it. This is what happened with the “Buddha” file, published by the site Bivol in 2013. Within one afternoon, by order of the then Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, it was declassified and provided to the media. The same thing can be done now by declassifying and announcing the names of the tapped objects and the intercepted contacts at the initiative of the Ministry of Interior.

Below we summarized the facts known so far for the application of SSDs against the three known sites: “Tycho”, “Nastimir” and “The Fighter” and their intercepted contacts. The table will be supplemented as new information becomes available on the topic.

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This post is also available in: Български (Bulgarian)