Interior Minister Roumen Petkov has disclosed to national private television channel bTV the names of four public figures, including two serving Deputy Speakers of Parliament and Bulgaria's Chief Mufti, who Petkov said worked for the communist-era political police.
He sent the names in a letter to bTV morning talk show host Nikolai Barekov, who had requested information on the pasts of 47 people, including politicians, senior members of the judiciary, religious officials, and other public figures.

On May 31, the names disclosed were those of Petar Beron, a Deputy Speaker and a member of ultra-nationalist coalition Ataka; Yunal Lyufti, a Deputy Speaker and an MP for the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party mainly supported by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent; Krassimir Karakachanov, the leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, and Chief Mufti Moustafa Alish Hadji.

Lyutfi was registered as an agent with the State Second Second General Directorate on November 30 1967, under the alias Mourad, which in 1985 was changed to Sider. The information which Lyutfi provided was used for the purposes of Interior Ministry intelligence and counterintelligence. Beron was registered as an agent with the SSC Sixth Department on December 22 1969, under the alias Bonchev. There was no evidence of consent on his part or a declaration signed by him to co-operate with the State Security, according to Petkov. In 1990, the National Service for the Protection of the Constitution (forerunner to the current National Intelligence Service) asked the SSC to remove all information about him from its records.

Karakachanov was registered as an agent with the SSC Sixth Department on May 11 1989, under the alias Ivan. There was no evidence of consent on his part or a declaration signed by him to co-operate with the SSC. He carried out analysis for the Interior Ministry counterintelligence, but did not report on Bulgarian nationals.

Moustafa Alish Hadji was registered as a State Security agent on December 11 1989 (a month after the democratic changes in Bulgaria) under the alias Andrei. There was no evidence of consent on his part or a declaration signed by him to co-operate with the SSC. The records about him were destroyed in February 1990.

Petkov said that there was no evidence of the other 43 people on Barekov's list having been State Security agents.