Veni Markovski was born 1968 in Skopie, Macedonia. He began working on the Internet in September 1990, by becoming one of the first system operators of a Bulletin Board System in Sofia, Bulgaria. By 1993 he had founded the second Internet Service Provider in Bulgaria - BOL.BG. In 1995 he started the Bulgarian Internet Society. He has chaired the Bulgarian President's IT Advisory Committee since 2002, and advises on International Projects for the Chairman of the State Agency for IT and Communications to the Council of Ministers or Republic of Bulgaria. Mr. Markovski has been member of the Bulgarian delegation to the U.N. World Summit on Information Society, and a member of the Advisory Group to the Internet Governance Forum. He was a member of the ICANN Board (2003-2006). He served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society (2002-2007), and on the Board of Directors of the Computers Professionals for Social Responsibility (2003-2005). Veni Markovski was also the Project Manager for UNDP projects for support of e-government initiatives in South-eastern Europe. His efforts have been positively reviewed by The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, heise.de and others. Veni Markovski has also served as project contact point for the Bulgarian ENUM trial (launched April, 2006), and as the president and chair of the board of the Internet Society of Bulgaria. In his capacity as country coordinator of the Global Internet Policy Initiative (GIPI), Veni Markovski acted as the legal expert to the Parliamentary Committee on Transport and Telecommunications;. He helped to draft and pass three Telecommunications and Electronic Communications Acts, the E-Document and E-Signature Act, the Computer Crimes chapter in the Penal Code, and the Free and Open Source Software Usage in the State Administration Act. He also implemented first legal strategy to successfully eliminate legal barriers to free Internet access (1999 ); and helped the Bulgarian government define positions on the WSIS and other Internet-related policies. Mr. Markovski is a graduate of the Sofia University, St. Kliment Ochridski, with Master's of Science degree in Law (1993), he also passed training by the International Law Development Institute in Rome, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and others. He has also authored hundreds of publications in Bulgarian and other foreign-language newspapers and magazines. He is a frequent presenter at numerous IT-related conferences. Mr. Markovski is currently serving as Chair of the Board and President of the Internet Society of Bulgaria, He is also a member of the Board of the Internet Society of New York, and the ICANN liaison to Russia/CIS.

Mr. Markovski will discuss INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN PREVENTING CYBERCRIME – SOME PRACTICAL EXAMPLES AND THE WAY FORWARD. Bulgaria has been known for a number of cases, involving ID-thefts, credit card frauds, computer viruses, etc. This all changes. The Bulgarian government, headed by the Internet Society member Sergey Stanishev, is trying to change that. Recently the National Security Council of the Republic of Bulgaria decided that the State Agency for IT and Communications, together with the NSC Secretariat, will work on changing the legal framework in order to combat computer crime. As I am advising the Chairman of the Agency on international projects, this is one of my top priorities now. I also had meetings with the newly elected attorney general (chief prosecutor) Mr. Boris Velchev to discuss possible actions with regards to training of prosecutors on combating cyber-crime. The Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin stated the interest of the Government of Bulgaria during his October 2005 meeting with US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice. The official press release noted, "Bulgaria reconfirmed its interest in setting up a cybernetic security center with the assistance of the US." During a visit of the Bulgarian minister of interior Rumen Petkov to the USA, he also discussed these problems with the US Authorities. The issue of combating cyber crime was one of the topics of his meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State Anne W. Patterson in February 2006. The US Government has allocated $ 4 Million support to programs in Bulgaria. The cyber security issue was recently discussed during PM Stanishev's visit to Washington, DC, during his meetings with Secretary Chertoff and President George W. Bush.