The prosecution service conducted searches at the private club "SS" in Sofia associated with Martin "the Notary" Bozhanov. Various documents and computers were seized for analysis, Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov told reporters on Wednesday evening. The searched were authorized by the Sofia City Court, he specified.
"While I was director of the General Directorate for Combating Organised Crime, work was carried out in relation to these people. Everything we have collected as data has been handed over to the prosecutor's office," Stoyanov added.
The club became known after Bozhanov's murder in Sofia on January 31. The prosecuting magistracy Wednesday said that since 2023 it has been working on pre-trial proceedings for an organised crime group of which Bozhanov was a part, set up to pressure magistrates, for property fraud and money laundering. Work on the case began after the prosecution service in late 2022 received a file from the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, opened following a signal mentioning the existence of such a club.
Bozhanov was shot dead in a gated complex in a Sofia suburb on the evening of January 31. According to media reports, he was a large-scale fixer of people's problems with the judiciary. He has been implicated in building a network of connections with prosecutors and judges whom he allegedly bribed, threatened, blackmailed or otherwise pressured to treat his "clients" favourably. On Tuesday, acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov ordered ex officio checks of the 25 case files and pre-trial proceedings in which Bozhanov has been an accused, complainant, witness or a party in another capacity since 2004. On Wednesday, Parliament set up an ad hoc committee of inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding the activity of the group around Bozhanov.
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