Virgil Măgureanu, (; born March 19, 1941, as Imre Asztalos) is a
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
n
sociologist that was the head of the main intelligence service of Romania,
Serviciul Român de Informații
The Romanian Intelligence Service (, 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, such as Romanian Government, presid ...
, 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 politician who was the second and last Communism, communist leader of Socialist Romania, Romania, serving as the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 u ...
and his wife,
Elena 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; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
, 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 Department of State Security (), commonly known as the Securitate (, ), was the secret police agency of the Socialist Republic of Romania. It was founded on 30 August 1948 from the '' Siguranța'' with help and direction from the Soviet MG ...
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 Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
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 ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
.
According to the CIA, Măgureanu's activities, and the fact that the CIA chief in Bucharest during 1990–92,
Harold James Nicholson was later exposed as a Soviet agent, followed by the 1994 arrest of
Aldrich Ames
Aldrich Hazen Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency, CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without th ...
, 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, Romanian Revolution of 1989, Constantinescu became a founding member ...
'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
Romanian politicians of Hungarian descent