Bulgaria's Files Commission, a special panel investigating the Communist regime secret files, announces Wednesday the results of its probe at the State Road Agency, NAPI.

Several high-ranking employees of NAPI have been agents or collaborators of the former Communist State Security (DS).

NAPI was created in 2008 by the cabinet of the Three-Way Coalition, led by Socialist, Sergey Stanishev, in an attempt to revamp the then Road Fund, after the so-called Batko (Big Brother) affair, when it was revealed the Head of the Fund, Veselin Georgiev, used his position to give his brother's company large-scale road projects.

Yanko Yankov, the first NAPI Head after Georgiev, Dimitar Ivanov, who replaced Yankov, and Bozhidar Yotov, who was appointed in 2009 by the cabinet of the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, GERB, party as Yankov's successor, have all been DS agents.

Yotov resigned from the post at the beginning of 2011 over discord with Regional Minister, Rosen Plevneliev.

The list of DS agents further includes the ex Road Fund Deputy of Veselin Georgiev, Zhivko Nedev, and Hasan Hasan, another ex Deputy, who served between 2006 until 2009.

The Files Commission has exposed as state security agents and collaborators a number of officials working in State institutions and major agencies, including the State Agency for National Security, Agriculture State Fund, the Public Financial Inspection Agency, and the Commission for Protection of Personal Data.

The blacklist of former state security agents and collaborators already features Socialist President Georgi Parvanov, MPs, former constitutional judges, supreme magistrates, investigators, members of parliament, prominent and well-known former and current Bulgarian journalists.

The files of the former Committee for State Security are a thorny issue in Bulgaria, especially when it comes to the past of high-ranking officials.

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.

The State Agency for National Security (DANS), the most prominent among those to be targeted by the files commission, was set up as an institution by former Socialist Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev himself by pooling together three previously existing counter-intelligence services.

It started operating on January 1, 2008, and has managed to generate a number of scandals ever since – including the spying on leading journalist (i.e. the Galeria case) and the missing top secret reports – a case under which Stanishev himself is facing charges of mishandling classified information.

At the end of 2010 the Files Commission revealed that almost half of Bulgaria's ambassadors abroad, in a number of key countries – from the UK to Russia and China, had been collaborators of the former State Security Service, stirring a row between the cabinet of the ruling Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, GERB, party and President, Georgi Parvanov.

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