Bulgarian police raided the offices of ex-gambling mogul Vassil Bozhkov and interrogated him on January 19 to probe a possible connection to the murder of former national security chief Aleksei Petrov.

Petrov was shot dead in mid-August 2023 during a walk on Vitosha mountain near Sofia.

The raids and the interrogation were confirmed by Bozhkov. The Ministry of Interior only issued a brief statement that it was carrying out raids related to Petrov’s murder.

Bozhkov said as quoted by state news agency BTA that the police searched for documents.

“They were searching for documents related to companies that are not related to me except for one. The names of these companies mean nothing to me,” Bozhkov said as quoted by BTA.

His lawyer, Georgi Gatev, said that Bozhkov was interrogated as witness in relation to several companies he previously owned but subsequently transferred the ownership to other people.

Bozhkov was suspected of a possible link to Petrov’s murder from the beginning, but he has repeatedly denied any connection to it. Moreover, he decided voluntarily to return to Bulgaria after Petrov’s murder.

Bozhkov returned to Bulgaria in the summer of 2023, after escaping to Dubai in 2020. At the time, the then chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev raised dozens of charges against him, including for extortion, tax evasion and blackmail. He was arrested and subsequently released to house arrest.

Petrov, who had several assassination attacks in the past, was more active publicly in the months before his assassination, offering his services to the national security agency, DANS. Local media reported this was a sign of improved relations between Petrov and the leader of the ruling Gerb party, Boyko Borissov.

In the 1990s, the two had a joint company. Petrov was also the founder of two insurance companies in the early 1990s, Apolo and Balkan and Spartak, which were rumoured to have been involved in blackmailing businesses to pay for protection.

Bozhkov has accused Borissov and his former finance minister Vladislav Goranov of accepting significant bribes from him in exchange for shielding his gambling business. Despite his testimonies, the prosecution ended its investigation of Borissov and Goranov, saying there was not sufficient evidence to back Bozhkov’s claims.