Read, Brendo, Read! Or how Cvetanov warned him twice that he was wanted. Mind the horns!

“The sad truth is I am not going to share my best, most delicate information with the Russian or Mexican police departments,” one senior official in the United Kingdom’s organized-crime agency told me when asked about Interpol. Even though the agency goes to great lengths to ensure the confidentiality of the information that its member agencies share with it, the reality is that national law enforcement agencies remain wary of revealing too much.” Moises Naim, Foreign Affairs

“Cocaine kings of the transition” are being investigated by the police for crime actions, connected with laundering money from drugs- thus said the Minister of Internal Affairs Cvetan Cvetanov on the 11th of May this year.

“We are working on the documenting of their crime action at the present moment. It comes to more powerful person than Taki“- said the minister.

Evelin Banev- Brendo has been captured four days later, on the 16th of May. It turned out that he was exactly “a cocaine king of the transition”, wanted with Interpol’s “red notice” issued from Switzerland.

The Swiss services with the collaboration of their European colleagues, have unraveled all the schemes of laundering money from drugs, says the quality newspaper “24 hours” (on the 17th of May) . It becomes clear from the article that Banev has tried to go to Spain at the end of April. He was stopped by the Bulgarian Border Police and thus he could not get on the airplane.

Then Brendo realized that he was investigated. He has been at liberty for whole three weeks, willing to find out what the Swiss know, says the crime reporter Slavi Angelov.

Evelin Banev was probably kept under observation (unlike Galevi brothers) as GDCOC (the antimafia squad) manages to localize and waylay him at the junction to Sozopol. But this does not belittle the questions to the cabinet of Cvetanov:

– why the Border Police set free Brendo in the presence of a red notice and why it did not called on the antimafia agency when he was still at the airport?

– why the minister announces the information of the forthcoming arrest of Banev although he knew with no doubt that Banev is aware of his investigation status and he will associate the “cocaine king” with the obstacle at the border.

– why the Prosecution, not missing to boast about their new information systems for millions, didn’t know about this red notice and the forthcoming actions of GDCOC?

The most important question comes at the end. It is logically connected to the previous ones. Did the Bulgarian authorities have the information about the investigation in Switzerland and about the operations of the other European authorities or they were intentionally kept in the dark, while Banev shown up in the database of the investigated persons of Interpol?

Instead, the actions of the Border Police and the blunder of Cvetanov could be interpreted as an attempt for Brendo to be warned about what is going to happen to him. It’s another question if he has understood the message, especially the message which Cvetanov sent him on the 11th of May. After all it’s not mandatory for Brendo to watch television and to read newspapers to see that he has been investigated.

All of this is rotten, very rotten as former antimafia agency chief Vanyo Tanov said. And it turns us to the sad truths about “the mafia state” Bulgaria, depicted and cited in the article published in the “Foreign Affairs” magazine, which was conveniently passed by all the Bulgarian leading media.

***

Ако намирате, че статията е интересна и полезна, можете да ни подкрепите, за да продължим да правим независима разследваща журналистика. If you find the article interesting and useful, you can support us to continue to do independent investigative journalism.

Включете се с Данъкъ Биволъ! Support Bivol

При възможност, станете наш редовен спомоществовател с опцията Месечен Данъкъ. Това ни помага да предвиждаме бъдещи разходи и да планираме дейността си за месеци напред.