If there was a profile of potential kidnapping victims in Bulgaria it would read something like this: a businessmen in his late 60s who has made a career both under communism and democracy with a legitimate business.  
 
Until recently the popular notion in Bulgaria was that such misfortune only befalls people involved in nefarious activities, as a way of solving personal disputes. The latest kidnappings - two within a month - proved that times might have changed.

Unfortunately, the police and prosecutors’ actions show that a small group of well-equipped, motivated and experienced men can abduct almost anyone from the street and keep them hostage for as long as they want. It’s a scenario familiar from Hollywood movies about Latin American countries. But the abductions of Kiro Kirov (70) and Vene Sotirov (64) led to the feeling that these films’ plot lines are being re-enacted in Bulgaria.    

It was a daring and heavy blow to Bulgarian law enforcement, even conceded by the Interior Ministry’s chief commissioner Pavlin Dimitrov, who said on April 20 that the public’s patience with such events was wearing thin. He was right. Sotirov was kidnapped on the evening of April 16 outside his residential building in Sofia’s populous Suhata Reka borough. His abduction took place just three days after Kirov was released from 17 days of captivity when his son paid a ransom of hundreds of thousands of euro to his kidnappers.  

Just when there was widespread relief that Kirov was released in good health - and with all his body parts intact - came the shocking news of Sotirov’s disappearance. Much speculation suggested that Sotirov had been kidnapped by the same organised criminal group that had managed to outsmart authorities for 17 days, keeping Kirov in a secret location and then escaping with the ransom. Kirov was abducted late on March 27 while parking his vehicle in the garage of his house in Bankya neighbourhood where he lives alone.

"Low profile" victim
Unlike Kirov, Sotirov lives in one of Sofia’s hundreds of Soviet-era panel blocks. He was abducted outside the entrance to the block in front of many witnesses, suggesting that the kidnappers must have felt so immune from detection that they deemed it unnecessary to wait for nightfall. Kirov reported that his kidnappers all wore police masks, had a police blue light in their 4x4 and even had a police radio station and referred to each other as "kolega" (colleague), police officers’ preferred form of address.

Witness reports from the day Sotirov was abducted told a similar story, explaining why kidnappers felt free to act in daylight hours while disguised as police officers. Based on the old axiom that bad things only happen to bad people, some speculation had it that the ‘kidnapping’ was just a stunt orchestrated by Sotirov himself to escape creditors, or that it had been perpetrated by another party who wanted to collect his debt. Kirov is one of the big importers of earth moving and other construction equipment. After his release, however, his statements about the behaviour of his abductors showed that he was simply kidnapped for money and nothing else.  

Sotirov, on the other hand, has always maintained a low profile. He works for a co-operative company that owns a chain of retail stores in Sofia and is involved in catering. According to his daughter, he was not even a businessman but just a company employee with a salary of 1779 leva a month. He retired from active work a few months ago but media reports said that in the past 15 years he had been on the board of several private banking institutions.

"You have simply made a mistake in abducting a man who has nothing to give," wrote his daughter in an open letter published in the media and addressed to his kidnappers.
On April 22, Bulgarian news agency BTA quoted its own sources from the investigation that kidnappers had demanded one million leva in ransom money, a rumour unconfirmed by Sotirov’s relatives. In Kirov’s case they had established contact two days after he was kidnapped by using his mobile phone and sending a text message to his son. Indeed his son later confirmed that the entire communication he had had with the kidnappers was via text messages.   

Inadequate response?
Amid all this publicity it was quite natural that public attention focused on the actions of prosecutors and police. Prosecutors were criticised for not reacting properly when they announced that a member of the same gang suspected of seizing Kirov had been in their custody as a protected witness. A few days later Sotirov was kidnapped, adding to the general feeling of lack of protection. Since then prosecutors have refused to comment on the case. The only good news to date came on April 22 when private national broadcaster Darik Radio said that five men, suspected by police of involvement in Kirov’s kidnapping, had been detained on Trakiya highway by police for 24 hours. As of April 22, the day The Sofia Echo went to the printers, this information still had not been confirmed by police.

On April 20, Interior Minister Mihail Mikov asked for legislative changes. These included harsher punishments for those guilty of kidnapping and sanctions for relatives who decide to pay ransoms. Another way to stop relatives from paying the ransom, according to Mikov, was to freeze their bank accounts. On April 21, however, Sofia prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov dismissed this idea, telling reporters that if their accounts were frozen, relatives would avoid co-operating with police. A major stumbling block to change, however, is not that these ideas lack merit, it’s simply lack of time; Parliament only has another three months before elections.