site.btaCriminal Group Charged with Counterfeiting Documents

121 JUSTICE - PROSECUTION - CRIMINAL GROUP - DOCUMENTS - ARMS

Criminal Group
Charged with
Counterfeiting Documents


Sofia, December 7 (BTA) - The Specialized Prosecution Office (SPO) has charged five persons with document counterfeiting, the SPO said Friday.

The General Directorate Combating Organized Crime seized from the five counterfeiters a large number of foreign and Bulgarian ID cards and passports, driving licences, passport-size photos, a computer with a specific ID data processing software, colour printers, laminators, scanners, memory sticks and other evidence of criminal activity.

The SPO asked the court that two of the counterfeiters be remanded in custody, while two others were released on 5,000 leva bail.

The group shared an intermediary with illegal arms traders. The middleman, an Iranian national, procured buyers of the counterfeit Bulgarian, Canadian, Italian, Iranian and other documents, as well as buyers of firearms offered on the black market by the arms traders.

The Iranian was charged in both pretrial proceedings and the prosecutors asked that he be remanded in custody in connection with the illegal arms case following the seizure of 17 AK-47 assault rifles, 15 Makarov pistols and 12 barrels for them earlier this week.

Two of the arms traders were charged with conspiracy to hold and sell firearms. Earlier on Friday, the SPO asked that they be held in indefinite custody.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said that the National Police Directorate's Dangerous Weapons Control service is to conduct a check at the Arsenal ordnance factory in Kazanluk (Central Bulgaria), which is to find out if the firearms and the parts thereof were manufactured there and at which stage of production they were sneaked out. RY/DD