Police have arrested a range of people including former State Agency for National Security officer Alexei Petrov, business people and an alleged sex worker from the Ukraine in an operation code-named Octopus, a reference to the tentacles of organised crime pervading Bulgaria.
 
The operation began on the night of February 9 2010, Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told journalists.
 
The operation was directed against a group involved in serious economic offences, influence peddling, racketeering, procuring, offering of sexual services for money, money laundering and tax evasion, he said.
 
Media reports said that those detained included the "Dambovtsi Brothers" – real names Yordan and Plamen Stoyanov, in connection with irregularities in the acquisition of the assets of Sofia’s Kremikovtsi steel mill.
 
The group had been in operation for more than 10 years, Tsvetanov was quoted as saying by Bulgarian news agency Focus.
 
Five striptease bars and 13 night clubs in Sofia were raided. Some of the women employed at the clubs allegedly had been offering sexual services. During the investigation, illegal drugs were found and confiscated.
 
One foreigner, a woman from Ukraine whose visa had expired, was among those arrested at the striptease bars and nightclubs.
 
Tsvetanov said that during the inspections, a woman had jumped from the second story of a building and fallen on top of a croupier.
 
Checks on the licences of night clubs and bars were continuing, Tsvetanov said.
 
In an interview with Dnevnik, he said that the operation would expose how, during the transition period, the "octopus" had spread its tentacles into all echelons of the executive, the legislature and every branch of authority.
 
Interior Ministry chief secretary Kalin Georgiev said on February 10 that there had been new arrests, of people "some of whom had very famous aliases".