Virgil Măgureanu, (; born March 19, 1941) is a
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...
n
sociologist that was the head of the main intelligence service of Romania,
Serviciul Român de Informații
The Romanian Intelligence Service ( ro, Serviciul Român de Informații, abbreviated SRI) is Romania's main domestic intelligence service. Its role is to gather information relevant to national security and hand it over to relevant institutions, ...
, or SRI (Romanian Intelligence Service) between March 26, 1990 and April 25, 1997 (when he resigned following a disclosure about his personal wealth, made at television while Virgil Măgureanu was among the invited people).
Măgureanu was one of the members of the Military Tribunal that sentenced to death both
Nicolae Ceaușescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu ( , ; – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician and dictator. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and the second and last Communist leader of Romania. He ...
and his wife,
Elena
Elena may refer to:
People
* Elena (given name), including a list of people and characters with this name
* Joan Ignasi Elena (born 1968), Catalan politician
* Francine Elena (born 1986), British poet
Geography
* Elena (town), a town in Veliko ...
on December 25, the Christmas Day of 1989, the former Communist leaders of Romania.
According to the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
, Măgureanu was named to the post primarily on the basis of his "dissident" status within Ceaușescu's regime, based on his teachings at the communist party's social science academy during the 1980s. Initially Măgureanu managed to hide his membership in the
Securitate
The Securitate (, Romanian for ''security'') was the popular term for the Departamentul Securității Statului (Department of State Security), the secret police agency of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Previously, before the communist regime ...
from the post-communist authorities, but his affiliation was exposed by the press years later.
Western intelligence services discovered that immediately after his appointment, in April 1990, Măgureanu met secretly with
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
Chief
Evghenii Primakov without informing the political authorities in Romania. Măgureanu's KGB contacts remained unknown to the Romanian Presidency and Governments until 2003, when the Western services that monitored those contacts informed
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
.
According to the CIA, Măgureanu's activities, and the fact that the CIA chief in Bucharest during 1990–92,
Harold James Nicholson
Harold James Nicholson (born November 17, 1950) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who was twice convicted of spying for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
Nicholson's recruitment to the SVR appears to have occurr ...
was later exposed as a Soviet agent, followed by the 1994 arrest of
Aldrich Ames
Aldrich Hazen "Rick" Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer turned KGB double agent, who was convicted of espionage in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Federa ...
, effectively rendered closer intelligence relations between Romania and the West impossible during the first half of the 1990s.
Virgil Măgureanu was deposed as head of SRI in 1997, at the beginning of
Emil Constantinescu
Emil Constantinescu () (born 19 November 1939) is a Romanian professor and politician, who served as the President of Romania, from 1996 to 2000.
After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Constantinescu became a founding member and vice president ...
's mandate as President of Romania.
Controversies
He was suspected of being the eminence grise in the big corruption scandals - Eurocolumna, the oil business, Cigarette I and Cigarette II, Bastos, Porcelain, Megapower and the Villa de la Giurtelec.
References
External links
* Larry L. Watts
Intelligence Reform in Europe's Emerging Democracies(CIA website)
* Dana Donciu
Destinul principalilor participanți la procesul soților Ceaușescu(Historia.ro website -- in Romanian), retrieved on December 23, 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Magureanu, Virgil
1941 births
Living people
People from Satu Mare County
Romanian sociologists
Directors of the Romanian Intelligence Service