Three former constitutional judges have been state security collaborators, the body in charge of Bulgaria's secret files announced.

Georgi Markov, Dimitar Gochev and Todor Todorov worked as judges at the Constitutional Court during the period from 1994 to 2003.

Data of the nine-member committee, which was appointed to decide on the declassification and disclosure of secret files, shows that Markov has been collaborator of the Sixth Direction since 1972.

Todor Todorov was recruited with the security services, the Durjavna Sigurnost, in 1982 and stayed there until 1984. Dimitar Gochev was contributor from 1971 to 1988.

"This issue, including my morale, was judged by no other but the Constitutional Court in 1994. Above it stands only God," Markov commented, adding that he was one of the few, who did not steal anything while in power.

"The fact that there is a card in a card-index can in no way prove that I was a contributor to the State Security," he added.

The first allegations of Markov's murky past surfaced in October last year in the heat of the presidential pre-election campaign.

Mihail Konstantinov, deputy head of the Central Election Commission, told private bTV channel that he had first-hand accounts of people who had seen the dossier of rightist presidential runner Georgi Markov.

Some files had been destroyed, but there was still a list of all the people hurt because of Markov's actions and one of them was even charged in court, the CEC official added.

Following the latest revelations the list of state security collaborators is slowly swelling - at the end of April six out of 218 runners in Bulgaria's first MEP elections were revealed to have been state security collaborators.

Bulgaria's communist-era security service is believed to have remained potent after the fall of communism with the ex-operatives closely linked to the political and business establishment.

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