А special panel, investigating Bulgaria's communist-era police files, has exposed another batch of local top journalists and media owners as state security agents and collaborators.

The names of Todor Batkov, owner of the popular Standart newspaper and Bulgarian football club Levski; Petko Bocharov, the much respected long-term journalist from the Bulgarian News Agency and the Bulgarian National Radio; Petar Mandzhukov, former owner of Duma newspaper, the mouth-piece of the Bulgarian Socialist Party; Valeri Naydenov, top journalist from 24 Hours daily, one of the most highly circulated dailies and former editor-in-chief of Klassa business daily were added on Wednesday to the blacklist that the so-called Files Commission has been preparing since its establishment nearly three years ago.

An interesting entry in the list is the name of leading journalist Georgi Gatev, who was part of the editorial staff of Standart daily, but is currently on the team of the online edition Еuractiv.com, which deals with EU affairs and published some of the most biting and discrediting articles about Bulgaria's first candidate for European Commissioner Rumyuana Zheleva.

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.

Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has vowed to deal with the issue of communist-era secrets in a conclusive manner and fulfill hopes for a full and final declassification of the files prepared by the country's intelligence services before the fall of the regime.

For years on end Bulgaria's politicians have been inching towards a further opening of the files, producing only unsatisfactory and politically compromised results.

A partial opening of the files under an anti-communist government in 1997 first gave over 25,000 Bulgarians access to their own dossiers, and led to the naming of around 150 state security collaborators (a parliamentary commission identified several MPs, ministers and candidates for public office as former agents).

However, in 2002 new legislation on access to information gave the power to declassify files to the successor bodies of the communist-era intelligence services. As a result, little progress was made in the direction of declassification.

More effective solutions were sought in the years afterwards and culminated in the establishment of the Files Commission in April 2007 as part of Bulgaria's long overdue efforts to finally face up to its totalitarian past and disclose who did what for the secret police under communism.

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