Sofia District Prosecutor's Office Requests Galev's Permanent Detention

The Sofia District Prosecutor's Office is asking that the notorious businessman from the town of Dupnitsa, Plamen Galev, his accountant Krasimir Okov and his bodyguard Georgi Gradevski are kept under permanent arrest, the Prosecutor's Office spokesperson Rusi Aleksiev reported on Friday.

Galev and Okov are accused of extortion.

According to Aleksiev, the two have been blackmailing Lydia Pavlova, a reporter for the local "Struma" newspaper, who had filed a lawsuit against Gradevski for severely beating her son and another young man in a discotheque in Dupnitsa. Galev and his accountant, allegedly, pressured Pavlova to withdraw the complaint by threatening her that they would discredit her son as a drug addict.

"There is no such thing at all. The young man is not a drug addict. The two have not done anything to provoke the beating," Aleksiev said.

The extortion attempt allegedly has taken place on November 8.

The Supreme Cassation Prosecutor's Office has further ordered the initiation of two preliminary legal proceedings against police officers from the town of Dupnitsa for their suspected involvement in the cover-up of the Galev brothers activities. The policeman are being investigated for their failure to get involved in the beating of the young men by the Galev bodyguard and for issuing gun permits to individuals who did not have the right to carry a gun.

Earlier on Friday Plamen Galev was detained under a Prosecutor's order for 72 hours at the Unit for Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP).

Around 6 am, GDBOP officers entered the Galev residencies in the village of Resilovo and began a search of the estate.

Galev's business partner Angel Hristov said that they both learned about the authorities search for Galev from a radio news broadcast, and Galev turned himself into GDBOP. Hristov declared that the Friday detention was yet another attempt to discredit them.

Plamen Galev and Angel Hristov AKA the Galev Brothers became publicly known after it was leaked to the media that the former Interior Minister Rumen Petkov had met with them while they were under investigation for organized crime activities.

The information spurred a scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of Petkov as Interior Minister.

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