| Gangsters – the Secret Services Casual Apparatus of Agents |
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| Tuesday, 21 October 2008 00:00 | ||||||
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Recruiting criminals is also an option for fighting against mafia but as it is still alive and well, obviously this is just a means for protection of criminal activities. ALEXANDER PETROV Sega newspaper translation opasnite.eu “Our Services did not manage to find the distinction between having agents, using agents and though not allowing the whole criminal contingent to be classified as agents or to have positions either in the left wing of the long building at “Cherni Vrah”/“Black Mount” street, or in the right one”. That symbolic remark was uttered in public five or six years ago by one of the heroines of today’s soap opera as well, the Member of Parliament and the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Tatyana Doncheva. Being carefully read, it meant that all people of operative interest were either agents of National Directorate Fight against Organized Crime, or of National Security Service, both housed in the building in question. The reason for the retort was much alike the present one. At that time there was another scandal concerning the Special Services and parliamentary hearings to the police and prosecutors’ elite followed. Explanations had to be given why no measures were taken against Konstantin Dimitrov – the Samokov man and Ivan Todorov – the Doctor, no matter that it was constantly commented in the publicity that they were the bosses of contraband trade. And considering the socialist Member of Parliament’s words, it came out that obviously those two were classified as secret collaborators of the Special Services. The Samokov man and the Doctor are no more though. Now other people of operative interest (if we go by the public comments and the actions taken against them by the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Agency) – the Galev brothers brought to light that they still have something to do with the Services. After it came clear that they were on the secret on the secret pay-roll of the Ministry of the Interior, they did not give n outright answer to a direct question whether they are still secret collaborators of the Services. Just at a certain moment they threw in hints that even if they were, they would not announce it in the media. They had their good reasons for that decision. What will happen to the secret nature of their collaboration if they made it public on the air? However, the situation brings again into ardent discussions the topic about the secret collaborators of the Services and the methods of choosing, protecting and using them. The whole matter became even more complicated few months ago in the heat of the scandal, in which Rumen Petkov was the central figure, when it became clear that the businessman and ex-baret Alexey Petrov was also a secret collaborator – at first of the Ministry of the Interior, then of National Security Agency. And now Petrov has got position on the staff even – he has become advisor of the National Security Agency Chairman. To put it in other words, he has neither the secret status, nor the rank of collaborator anymore. He was called Petko Sertov’s right hand. A lot was commented on the inefficiency of phone tapping and keeping under observation but no one put to discussion the poignant issue about the secret collaborators’ usefulness. No one raised the question about the way they are chosen either. Nothing was said to explain why the Services cannot protect the few agents they have from coming to light, being in bad repute or getting shot. And what about the suspicion which gradually grows to conviction that the Services rescue their collaborators from the right of justice by giving them the shelter of the power in their possession? There is no doubt that the files of record, the ex-National Security Service and the contemporary economic and social conditions made the drama two twice as influential as it used to be in concern to the agents’ structure. Should it be put in other words – the Ministry of the Interior does not stand almost any chance to recruit agents. It is beyond dispute that they have got quite a job as well. That’s why they started winning over the criminal contingent to fill in their ranks. Often they also set to attracting some of the Ministry of the Interior’s ex-officials as well as such from the Special Services for secret collaborators. The people in question have quit the state job and the system for a long time and since then they have been dealing with their own business – both undoubted doings, and suspicious activities. Such is the case of Petrov and the Galev brothers. Moreover, because of everything aforesaid, the Ministry of the Interior and the Special Services managed to pass a whole bunch of bills concerning the agents under cover, who are officials on the pay-roll of administration by rule. It is clear, though, that no one and nothing being part of the criminal world can be fought with, pursued by law, sentenced or tried to handle without having the protection shield of belonging to the not regular staff of the Services. That is why when some time passes or so, national meetings are called, where the situation is given the most dramatic shades in description and taking measures is put on the agenda again and again. However, it is evident that such steps have not been taken yet. Matters are even worse than the Ministry of the Interior and the Services admit. To cap it all, they are garnished in the typical Bulgarian style with other things that are too illegally performed once again. Because in our country there was a case, one in which wash-out of dirty money was involved, and it got away with being brought to trial for the mere reason that one of the organizers came out to be a collaborator not on the regular payroll of the Services. In other cases there stood the suspicion was entertained that in order not to have even the Prosecutor’s Office and the Court “given in to the pressure of the responsibility to the State”; everything possible was made to cover up people, evidence and many other things. Beside that, the Special Authorities do not make a thorough selection of the people on their staff. This especially holds true for some of them. Because there are cases which only prove it – Customs officers with or without cigars, for whom doubts standing on solid grounds were raised that the same have been protected under the shelter of the Services political power in their authority of collaborators. Those people brag with their untold riches, lack of respect for the power of the State and affiliation to the Services. Positively many of you will think of the Cigar and Jimmy, who have not been sentenced yet, although almost everyone swore that there was enough evidence against them. Now, it is even claimed that the Cigar has been abducted or simply disappeared at his own will. It is strange that the official authorities keep silence on this case. There were other similar cases, in one of which even including a chief of the governmental press centre also appeared to have a card of a secret service collaborator, who is not on the staff. The explanation in those cases, deeply motivated by sense of responsibility to the State, was that they needed the document in order to legitimate the possession of a gun. What a structure of agents, isn’t? However, much more terrible is the fact that the State is not even capable of protecting them. The manager of a consultancy company was killed three or four years ago. On that very same day the responsible authoritative bodies from the Ministry of the Interior announced that he was a collaborator of theirs, not regularly appointed, who helped some time before the fatal accident in the process of revealing a contraband affair, which cost millions of dollars, and he had to testify in court. So, the Ministry has got the agent capacity, it has already described it well in its archives, it uses the people on that staff to disclose serious crimes and fight against organized crime, and to put under arrest the people involved in those illegal doings. Though, it is strange why only when someone died, just then the truth would be revealed that he/she belonged to the Secret Services as an agent not on the staff. Still, there is no clarity how the unknown people, who ordered the murder, found out just few days before the victim testified in court, that the person in question helped the police. Does the mafia really use such means for fighting? And who then will help the Ministry of the Interior and justice in their work? How exactly a person could have the confidence that if he/she gives information, it will not be their end? Something else can be felt in the air and it is quite unpleasant in its nature, too. What is it? It is that under the shelter of power and using the “agent” status as justification, some people make a fortune – either by some doings in the Customs or by earning money via value added tax draw-out; no matter whether it is a state job or some kind of business in the private sector. This is totally unacceptable. After all, we are all equal in the eye of the law, no one is superior to law and there is only one justice. Unfortunately, it is true. Not to mention that the services are still eaten up with cruel envy. This is explainable to a certain extent – no one wants to collaborate with a secret service from the agent structure, let alone sharing it with another. And this is exactly how we come to the paradoxes like a certain service to function and work out a record of another one’s agent. Then, it is so “fun” that the whole publicity bursts into laughing but this laughter makes them cry. For everyone sees clearly the results from the fight against organized crime and corruption on highest levels of authority – regardless of the agents’ collaboration and their status of being on the regular staff or out of it. Matters in Bulgaria are of much more dramatic and poignant nature as far as the apparatus of agents is concerned. Only the accountability and consideration for the State and the national security do not allow us to touch and analyze everything we are familiar with. There is no doubt that the Ministry of the Interior and the Special Services definitely have to put to close scrutiny their structure of agents once again, and as it goes to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Court – they have to keep a sharp eye on everyone being equal in the eye of the law. And when unpleasant facts, circumstances and people come to light, let’s not haste to put a veil on it. After all, in the very near future Bulgaria will turn to a country, spreading out all kinds of “shelters” that give protection to gangsters and agents exclusively, until they merge into one whole.
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