At the center of the story are the head of a private espionage company operating in Bulgaria, an Israeli who lectures on terrorism at a Bulgarian university and other universities in Europe, and a rogue real estate man who stole his friends' money in shady deals in order to establish the company with these funds, and if that were not enough, he is also a terrorist and a spy in the service of the Russians.
Thus, while the plaintiff complained about the various publications in connection with the book, the defendant continued to write and publish chapters of the book during 2016 as well.
- During 2018, the defendant filed the previous lawsuit, as did the plaintiff's counterclaim against the defendant. While these proceedings are underway, this claim was filed on December 22, 2022.
Part Two: Summary of the Arguments
- According to the plaintiff, in publishing the book and all the publications that the defendant made in connection with the book, the defendant committed against him torts of defamation and invasion of privacy.
According to the plaintiff's version, the same character on which the book is based, the same villain, is in fact himself, the plaintiff. The character of that imaginary man, the villain, is described in the book as an Israeli specializing in Internet intelligence, as someone who teaches intelligence at Sofia University, as an investor in a real estate business in Bulgaria, and as someone who underwent gastric bypass surgery and suffers from diabetes. These details about the character of that person correspond exactly to the plaintiff's details, and in fact, so the plaintiff claims, these details of information and descriptions correspond only to the plaintiff and not to anyone else. Any person who knows the plaintiff can easily identify the plaintiff as the character of that person in the book and in the various publications in connection with the book.
The plaintiff further claims that the defendant did not suffice with bringing these details from which the plaintiff could be identified as the same person in the book, the villain, but also took additional actions to ensure that the public would identify the character with the plaintiff. The defendant, the plaintiff claims, created a link between the plaintiff's name in English and the book. This link led to the fact that every person who typed the plaintiff's name into the Google search engine came to the publication of the book and the same character - the villain.