2024-04-14 09:11:32
“Nikolai Nikolov – Pascal was not a customs officer. He was a driver in international transport, I have known him by chance since 1993. I met him at the wedding of a friend of mine. There are political emigrants from Greece settled in Haskovo and Dimitrovgrad. These people are interesting for State Security. The leading officer caught Nikolai as a young man and put them in touch with one of these Greek emigrants, and after 1990 they created a joint company. The Greek citizen living in Bulgaria – his relatives began to organize the cigarettes from Cyprus through Thessaloniki and so on to Bulgaria”. This was stated by the former director of customs in Svilengrad, Georgi Shishkov, in “Govori sega” on BNT.
Having gone through two assassination attempts, Shishkov subsequently became a deputy of the UDS. He is one of the first to be accused of taking money from smuggling. Shishkov, however, managed to condemn a politician who accused him, and in turn claimed that the general group, which included the late Gen. Lyuben Gotsev is behind the channels. Today Georgi Shishkov is far from politics.
Shishkov explained that the big figure in smuggling was Ivan Todorov-Doktora, and Pascal was just a good “executor”.
“He plays the big games, and Pascal is a regional representative, he is a good performer, he doesn’t ask unnecessary questions, he doesn’t improvise, maybe that’s why he has survived over the years,” added Georgi Shishkov.
According to him, people from “the top of politics” are not always involved in such schemes.
“Very often things depend on the district level. In order for a channel to function, three people are needed – a customs officer to let the goods pass, a policeman and a magistrate to protect them. It is not necessarily a person from the top of politics I have doubts that Petya Bankova is involved in such schemes,” Shishkov further explained.