After a short illness, the long-time Director General of BTA, Maxim Minchev, passed away. He was born in 1953 in Sofia. He graduated in journalism in Lviv, Ukraine, and pedagogy from the Military Academy “G.S. Rakovski ”. He had NATO scholarship in Brussels. In 2016, he was elected Secretary General of the News Agencies World Council and in 2018 he received a three-year term as its President. Maxim Minchev is also the initiator of the world meetings of the Bulgarian media, which gathered journalists from many countries every year. He had worked in a number of newspapers and had been deputy editor-in-chief at the Bulgarian National Radio, as well as a host at Radio Free Europe. "A proven and respected journalist with extensive professional experience who was always guided by the standards of the profession," Prime Minister Boyko Borissov wrote, expressing his condolences on his Facebook page.