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Bulgarian authorities name Russians accused of businessman Gebrev’s assassination attempt

The alleged suspect is being looked into in connection with the Skripal investigation
Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office wikimedia.org/Bin im Garten/CC BY-SA 3.0
Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office
© wikimedia.org/Bin im Garten/CC BY-SA 3.0

SOFIA, February 21. /TASS/. Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office announced names of the three Russians, accused by the authorities of poisoning businessman Emilian Gebrev in 2015, the Office said in a statement available on its website.

"Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office has filed charges against three Russian nationals: Sergey Viktorovich Pavlov, Sergey Vyacheslavovich Fedotov and Georgy Gorshkov," the statement reads. "The investigation has determined that the mentioned persons have never left country under their real names. In various years, they used different international passports with false names," the message runs.

All the three charged live in Moscow, the statement claims. The Prosecutor’s Office also published photos of the alleged criminals.

The investigation has also acquired information on four more attempts to assassinate the Bulgarian businessman. Two attempts took place outside Bulgaria, but the entrepreneur never reported them, it says.

The assassination attempt

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the incident took place between April 28 and May 4, 2015. On January 20, the Office published a video of a masked man walking inside a car garage, which belonged to Emco company owner and his son. The Emco company specializes in ammunition trade.

Following the 2018 Salisbury incident, in which former intelligence officer Sergey Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent, the British investigation began looking into Russian military intelligence officer, whom they referred to as Sergey Fedotov. The media reported that the Scotland Yard and MI-5 counter-intelligence service would probe the 2015 assassination attempt of Gebrev and his son, both of whom survived. To that end, a group of British investigators has visited Bulgaria.