Update: Bulgarian spy reportedly a double agent

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The latest news from Bulgaria is that a Bulgarian former military attaché arrested in the recent Romanian spy scandal was in fact a double agent who was covertly working for the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI). On February 28, Romanian counterintelligence agents arrested Petar Marinov Zikolov (or Zikulov) along with Romanian noncommissioned officer Floricel Achim, on charges of supplying classified military information to Ukrainian embassy officials. Zikolov, who was Bulgaria’s military attaché in Romania from 1998 to 2000, is said to have acted as an intermediary between Achim and the Ukrainians. But fresh reports from Bucharest suggest that the Bulgarian former diplomat was apprehended by Romanian counterintelligence agents in 2008 and agreed to surrender information about “everything he had been doing in Romania” as well as detailed lists with names of “collaborators from foreign states”. What is more, Zikolov then began working for SRI and helped lead Romanian authorities to Achim. It is worth noting that Romanian authorities have not implicated Bulgaria in the affair, having discovered no operational link between Bulgarian intelligence and Zikolov’s activities in Romania. Some insiders are also speculating about a possible role of Russian intelligence in the spy scandal. Intelnews will post further information on this development as it emerges.