Bulgarian President Radev names former State Security staffer as security and defence adviser
Bulgarian President Roumen Radev has appointed Ilian Alipiev, formerly a member of the country’s communist-era secret service State Security’s counterintelligence division, as his adviser on security and defence.
The March 1 statement by the President’s office said that Alipiev, a graduate of the Benkovski Military University and the Rakovski Military Academy, had held several positions in the special services of the Interior Ministry and Defence Ministry.
Alipiev had completed courses in security management and leadership at the Interior Ministry and had done a specialist course at the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall Centre, the statement said.
In July 2008, Bulgaria’s Dossier Commission – the body charged by statute with disclosing the identities of people who worked for State Security – said that Pleven-born Ilian Alipiev had joined State Security’s third department as a scout in September 1985. The commission said at the time that it was in possession of documents showing that Alipiev had remained with the services after November 1989.
His identity was disclosed by the commission after it emerged during a check of senior officials of state agencies.
In recent years, Alipiev has authored numerous articles about his ideas about restructuring Bulgaria’s security and intelligence services.
Alipiev is the first person with a State Security background to be appointed by Radev since he took office as head of state on January 22. Radev’s predecessor Rossen Plevneliev refused to have anyone on his staff who had worked for State Security, and also refused to decree the appointment of ambassadors with such a background.
Alipiev’s career includes having been appointed an intelligence officer at the ministry of national defence in May 1990, going on to a post in military counterintelligence at the army general staff in October 1990.
He was acting head of the State Reserve and Military Stocks state agency in 2006, at the time that the Movement for Rights and Freedoms’ Emel Etem was the cabinet minister responsible for the agency, with Delyan Peevski as her deputy. Alipiev had been head of the inspectorate at the agency and was appointed acting head when Etem dismissed the director and deputy director.
Alipiev went on, after his time at the agency, to head the security directorate at the Defence Ministry’s Terem company, which specialises in repair, modernisation and logistics support of aviation equipment, ship repairs, armoured equipment and small arms and light weapons, artillery, missiles and ammunition, as well as radar and communication equipment.
/Politics
