Three foreigners, who held responsible positions in “Arsenal” (town of Kazanlak), were arrested on suspicion of espionage, the Ministry of Interior announced.
The specialized operation was carried out after it was filed on October 3 this year. signal for established lack of specific products from Arsenal AD – Kazanlak and documents related to them – information extremely sensitive for the company and of interest to Bulgarian or foreign competitors.
After the interaction with Territorial Directorate for National Security – Stara Zagora, joint actions are planned, the regional prosecutor’s office was notified.
Witnesses were questioned as part of the investigation, and it was established that a 24-year-old Lithuanian citizen, a 59-year-old fellow citizen, and a 60-year-old Russian citizen worked at the plant with employment contracts.
Their activity was related to innovative technologies, providing the company’s products.
The three were on unpaid leave until September 17, 2021, after which they did not show up for work.
It was established that they were traveling in cars, a report on their trips abroad showed that they entered the country on October 2, 2021, were in Kazanlak and went back.
In order to prevent them from leaving the country, a request for a thorough inspection was sent to the Border Police of the Ministry of Interior.
On October 5, 2021, the three foreigners and their cars were detected at the Border Checkpoint Kulata and based on written information from the Regional Police – Kazanlak, were detained for up to 24 hours.
During procedural and investigative actions, papers and items were found in their cars, which are presumed to be directly related to the subject of evidence in the pre-trial proceedings.
Decrees have been prepared for the forced bringing of the persons to be escorted to the Kazanlak Regional Hospital and to bring them in as defendants.
The work on the case continues under the supervision of the District Prosecutor’s Office – Stara Zagora.
The prosecutor’s office is already investigating why the Interior Ministry announced the arrest of the Arsenal spies.
The Stara Zagora District Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint and initiated proceedings for disclosure of information, which is an investigative secret and was disclosed without the permission of the supervising prosecutor. It is about the information that came yesterday from the Ministry of Interior about the operation to capture the three foreign nationals who were carrying out espionage in “Arsenal” – Kazanlak.
In this regard, employees of the Ministry of Interior, SANS and others will be interrogated. and if sufficient evidence is gathered, appropriate action will be taken to prosecute the perpetrators.
On October 7, 2021, the District Prosecutor’s Office – Stara Zagora filed a complaint and initiated pre-trial proceedings for a crime under Art. 360 of the Penal Code – disclosure of information constituting an investigative secret in already initiated pre-trial proceedings.
We remind you that the pre-trial espionage proceedings are being conducted by the District Prosecutor’s Office – Stara Zagora, and the operation to detain the two Lithuanians and the Russian was announced by the press center of the Ministry of Interior.
“The disseminated information would endanger the national security of the country, may hinder the investigation and the implementation of criminal liability of the perpetrators. The data were exported without permission of the supervising prosecutor from the District Prosecutor’s Office – Stara Zagora within the meaning of Article 198, paragraph 1 of PPC – the materials of the investigation cannot be disclosed without the permission of the prosecutor “, reads today’s announcement of the new proceedings initiated by the prosecutor’s office against the Ministry of Interior and the State Agency for National Security.
We remind you that the only major such case, which the authorities announced as disclosed, concerned a group of Bulgarian citizens, some of whom held high positions in the Ministry of Defense, working for the benefit of the Russian Federation. The group itself was led by a former head of military intelligence. The capture of the group took place in March this year and the case came into circulation during the election campaign.
The capture of the group was then announced at a special briefing of the prosecutor’s office with the participation of Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev, although information about the operation itself had leaked to the media the day before.
At this stage, there is no information on how far the investigation has come, but it has not yet entered the court phase.
After the Czech Republic revealed in April that an incident with two people had died since 2014 in a military plant was a sabotage by the GRU, the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office joined in with the revelations.
The prosecutor’s office announced that they had found a connection between explosions in Bulgaria and the attempts to poison Emilian Gebrev and two other people, similarities were found in four of them in the period from 2011 to 2020. Investigations have been unfrozen, but there is no information about them their development.
At the end of August this year, there was an accident at the Arsenal plant, in which one worker died.
