2024-09-14 08:00:46
A panel of the District Court-Haskovo did not accept the prosecution’s request to impose the most severe measure of detention and placed under house arrest 47-year-old Dimitar Dimitrov from Stara Zagora, accused of smuggling gold – 124,708 kilograms – a record for the last 40 years in our country worth BGN 10,600,197.
The shipment was discovered in the cache of his car at the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint (BCP) on September 11 of this year. upon careful inspection.
At a briefing earlier today at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, the director of the “Customs” Agency, Georgi Dimov, announced that the gold jewelry, ingots and bars were hidden in caches in various places in the car, extremely well and professionally prepared. They were discovered after a 13-hour thorough inspection of the car.
In front of the court, the accused Dimitrov said that he was aware of the crime he had committed and explained that he was driven to illegal trafficking by lack of money.
In a courtroom, it became known that he often traveled to Turkey, where he established contacts with local people, but also that he cooperated with the investigation.
Earlier in the day, it was reported that the law enforcement authorities are working on uncovering a gold smuggling channel on the territory of Turkey, Bulgaria and Western European countries. The channel from Western Europe through Bulgaria to Turkey has been monitored for several months. The gold went to Turkey in the form of bars, where they were processed and returned as jewelry to Europe.
The accused Dimitar Dimitrov will be under house arrest at the address where he lives in Stara Zagora, the Haskovo District Court ruled.
If he is found guilty, for the crime he has committed, imprisonment of five to 15 years and a fine of BGN 50,000 to 200,000 is foreseen.