He sat in his place, stunned: "I'm buying land for my friends," the oil snapped effortlessly, "when the day comes, I'll give them back some of the money."
The Russian smiled a frozen smile that never reached his eyes: "We both know that this day will never come. But it's okay as long as you do it in our service for the benefit of Mother Russia. After all, all spies are traitors. A person cannot be a spy without being a traitor to his soul."
It was copied from Nevo, so the character of the villain in the book is constructed. As a crook, the head of a criminal organization, a cheater and a traitor.
- About two months later, on August 20, 2015, the defendant published a record according to which he had already been approached to produce a film based on the book he was writing. The defendant also noted in the same publication that when asked how he sees the character of the main villain in the film, the villain Dana, the defendant presented a photograph of an unknown person, claiming that the character was shown "based on a picture of someone I found on the Internet in a random search." The same figure presented by the defendant in that entry (hereinafter: "The Unknown") appears to be an older man, with a dark complexion, balding and a mustache. The picture of the anonymous man was distributed by the defendant in other publications he made in connection with the book, in Hebrew and English. The photo of the unknown person was removed some time later.
- Another description of the book was published by the defendant on the Internet on August 31, 2015, as follows (p. 17 in the appendices to the plaintiff's affidavit):
"What began as a vicious fraud by an Israeli lecturer and real estate man in Bulgaria against his "friend" a journalist in Israel turns out to be only the beginning of a diabolical conspiracy against both the Republic of Bulgaria and the State of Israel.
For some time now I have been writing a suspense and espionage novel based on various real events and the current events in Eastern Europe, Russia and Bulgaria and their implications for Israel..."
- Shortly after he began publishing chapters from the book, the defendant was interviewed by a Bulgarian journalist, Ms. Vasislava Tantseva (hereinafter: "Vasislava") to a news website in Bulgaria, and during the same interview he presented the book, described his connection to Bulgaria and even mentioned the plaintiff by his full name as the person who invited him to visit Bulgaria. In the same interview, the defendant noted, among other things, that he also included "real facts" from his life in his books.
- The publication of the book was brought to the plaintiff's attention during 2015, and he believed that in publishing the book, the defendant was in fact trying to intimidate him, and that the same image created by the defendant as the hero of the book, the same villain, was in fact the plaintiff himself. On September 7, 2015, the plaintiff even sent a letter of complaint to the Israel Police, in which he described his relationship with the defendant, described the book, and even claimed that he feared for his life in light of the way it was portrayed in the book.
The letter of complaint sent by the plaintiff did not lead to any proceeding against the defendant.
- The defendant continued to publish chapters from the book throughout 2016 as well, and this is what the defendant wrote on May 1, 2016, as part of another chapter in the book entitled "The Bulgarian Fraud: Imagination Becomes Reality" (p. 107 in the appendices to the plaintiff's affidavit, including the photo):
A few months ago, I started writing a suspense-comic book novel called "The Bulgarian Scam".