site.btaUPDATED Customs Agency Director Bankova Detained for 72 Hours, Accused of Participating in Organized Crime Group

Customs Agency Director Petya Bankova was detained for 72 hours and is accused of participating in an organized crime group for influence peddling, smuggling and bribery, her lawyer Adelina Natina told the media on Thursday. Three other people whom Bankova does not know are also detained on the same charges, Natina added. Their names are Stefan Dimitrov, Martin Dimitrov and Nikola Nikolov.

Later in the day, the Sofia City Prosecution Office announced that it would ask the court to impose the most severe detention measure against the four defendants. The Prosecution Office said that the group was set up for smuggling, money laundering and corruption crimes. It added that in the course of the investigation, 30 searches were carried out in private homes, offices and cars. Mobile phones, documents, notes, notebooks with notes, computers, a large amount of money in different currencies, 1,501 master boxes (some 15 million pieces) of cigarettes, etc. were seized. Witnesses have been questioned in the case, the statement added.

Natina pointed out that in an informal conversation, officials from the Commission for Anti-Corruption and Illegal Assets Forfeiture (CACIAF) told her that a search had been conducted at the home of Interior Ministry Secretary General, Chief Commissioner Zhivko Kotsev. Earlier in the day, the Interior Ministry reported that Kotsev has tendered his resignation.

According to the indictment, the criminal group operated from January 2023 to April 3, 2024. Natina pointed out that Bankova did not know the people she was accused of being involved with in the criminal group. She specified that her client was appointed to the Customs Agency on August 8, 2023. He also added that the leader of the criminal group has not been named and the three accused with Bankova have been arrested. She confirmed that ten people were arrested in Wednesday's operation but only four have been charged and it is not clear what is happening with the others. Natina pointed out that Bankova's deputy, Lyudmil Marinov, has been released.

The lawyer assumed that the Prosecution Office would ask the court to impose a permanent detention order on Petya Bankova.

The State Agency for National Security (SANS) Wednesday announced that it was holding an unspecified operation in Sofia and other towns. Following news reports that the operation has led to the arrest of Customs Agency Director Petya Bankova, Bankova told reporters that she is “the first victim of the new anti-corruption commission” but “is not giving up”. In a pointed comment for the press later in the day, outgoing Finance Minister Assen Vassilev, who put Bankova at the helm of the National Customs Agency in late February as part of a large-scale reform of the revenue administration, said that unless the operation produces "serious evidence", it would "boil down to an attempt to intimidate the Customs Agency chief, who started to intercept the smuggling channels and fired 20 customs officers on alerts from foreign customs agencies, governments and services". 

Earlier on Thursday, outgoing Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov noted that since Petya Bankova has been appointed Customs Agency Director, record-setting amounts of drugs had been seized.  “I find it odd that it was Bankova who was accused of concealing drug channels,” Denkov said. “It is very important to find out what is going on so that it does not turn out that she [Bankova] is being attacked precisely because she is doing her job and seizing drugs," he added.