News that businessman Kiro Kirov, 70, had gone missing revived the issue of kidnappings in Bulgaria.

Kirov went missing on March 26 after his vehicle was found with its doors open in his garage. Since then, his family has been giving contradictory information, first saying he was missing and then that he was abroad, but that they did not know where and that no one had asked them for ransom.  

While Kirov’s family were left to deal with the issue as they could, one of the two institutions required by law to prevent and fight organised crime, which includes kidnappings, descended into yet another internal battle.

On March 31, the Sofia city branch of the Prosecutor-General’s Office said that none of the 15 pre-trial investigations into kidnapping cases that had started over the past three years had been solved. According to prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov, the reason none of these cases had made it to court was that police had failed to find the alleged perpetrators.

In turn, he gave three reasons for this failure: the weak motivation of police officers, their poor working conditions and their lack of experience in solving such crimes.
Kokinov said: "We prosecutors are no dreamers and we have long ago have suspected that there are links between police officers and kidnappers, but so far we have had no proof".

He cited the notorious case of Plamen Koutsarov, who died in police custody on January 21 2009. Koutsarov was arrested in connection with the kidnapping of a businessman. But, having taken a lie detector test, he was on the way back to his cell under escort by police officers when he fell ill and died. A forensic examination found that Koutsarov had been handcuffed and masked and forced to kneel, which had led to his suffocation.

Eight police officers faced sanctions over Koutsarov’s death, but the fact was that his detention had been the only such arrest on kidnapping charges.

On March 31, another prosecutor presented data on kidnappings, but unlike Kokinov’s data, the information unveiled by Sofia city deputy prosecutor Roman Vassilev was for the past two years. He told private national bTV channel that 10 per cent of the kidnappings that had happened in the past two years had been solved.

However, Vassilev’s figures said that there had been 14 kidnappings. This figure means that the 10 per cent accounted for more or less one kidnapping. If one recalls police statements from January 2009, this must be the kidnapping for which Koutsarov was arrested - and it never got to court.

Another problem is that reports in Bulgarian media in the past two years suggest that there are more kidnapping cases than those reported officially by the police. Some media, like mass-circulation daily newspaper 24 Chassa, allege that kidnappings have become a profitable business.

There was the so-called "low cost segment" where victims are being held hostage for up to 50 000 leva. They were treated well and were being sent home unharmed, the paper quoted its sources as saying.

There was even a list of names of potential victims floating around, with police doing little about it because family members preferred to pay up and not call the authorities.
True or not, this report shows that a sense of frenzy has started to appear in Bulgarian society.

So far, the Interior Ministry has not commented on the criticism expressed by prosecutors, but the way kidnappings have happened in 2008 shows that crime groups have few problems kidnapping whoever they want, outplaying both police and family.

The most famous case in 2008 was that of Angel Bonchev, former president of Litex Lovech football club. On May 22 2008, he was kidnapped in front of his home in Sofia and held for about 50 days. Despite police efforts, his whereabouts remained unknown. On July 10, Bonchev was released but his wife Kamelia was taken, presumably as she was to drop a ransom payment. She was released on July 30, a day after Angel Bonchev donated 157 000 euro to the Utre za Vseki foundation, which fights breast cancer.

Almost a year later, the Bonchev family continue to refuse, as do the police, to discuss the case. This lack of progress in the Bonchev case led to speculation that the police lacked the ability to fight kidnappers who always appear to have the advantage.

Naturally, the case led to a situation where rich Bulgarians started taking measures for their own safety, judging from the words of Bulgarian Socialist Party MP Tatyana Doncheva on Bulgarian National Television’s Referendum talk show on March 31.

"Rich businessmen did what they thought was the best option, which I find very stupid. They started hiring whole teams of bodyguards from the police elite unit for fighting organised crime. Now we have people with 10, 12, 15 bodyguards walking around which is nonsense and which will backfire on them because imagine what will happen to the police unit if you take out 40 or 50 well-trained men," she said.

According to former top Interior Ministry official Ivan Batsarov, the problem was that the lack of faith in the authorities to protect them would make businessmen organise themselves into small units ready to fight their own war against kidnappers.

"When the state does little to provide security, people start organising themselves," he told Referendum.
Former defence minister and current member of Parliament’s committee on internal order and public security Nikolai Svinarov was even more direct.
"You must known that every crime boss has ties with the police and until this changes nothing will change for good," he said.