Headquarters of Bulgarian company Lev Korporatsiya, the parent company of insurer Lev Ins, were raided late on February 10 by tax authorities and the police in what has been widely reported as a continuation of the Interior Ministry's operation code-named Octopus. Operation Octopus, carried out earlier in the day, resulted in the arrest of 14 people, including Alexei Petrov, a former adviser to the State Agency for National Security (SANS).

The raid resulted in the impounding of documents, computers and electronic storage devices, Dnevnik daily reported. The company did not issue an official statement on the issue, but Dnevnik quoted the head of Lev Ins re-insurance division, Ilian Danev, as saying that the insurer continued its normal operations and insurance policies were still being signed.

Lev Korporatsiya headquarters, however, reportedly have remained closed.

Petrov was listed as a minority shareholder in Lev Korporatsiya in 2006, but there was no recent data whether he was still a shareholder in the company, Dnevnik said.

Quoting sources familiar with the investigation, Dnevnik said that Petrov was charged with heading an organised crime group that has been in operation since 1997.

Since then, Petrov has participated in joint operations between the Interior Ministry, SANS and prosecutors. "In instances when we worked with Alexei Petrov, we have had no reasons to be unhappy with him, we have to be honest about that, but one has nothing to do with another," Prosecutor-General Boris Velchev said.

The group targeted by the operation was involved in serious economic offences, influence peddling, racketeering, procuring, offering of sexual services for money, money laundering and tax evasion, Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said.

Referring to one of the people under arrest by the nickname "The Tractor", Tsvetanov said that he was one of the highest-level organised crime linchpins targeted by the Interior Ministry. It was widely reported in Bulgarian-language media that Petrov was whom Tsvetanov was indirectly referring to.

Tsvetanov said that "The Tractor" was connected to "The Insolents" kidnapping gang. One person arrested as part of the operation, who turned himself in later in the day, was Anton "The Hamster" Petrov, who was mentioned in late 2009 as an alleged member of "The Insolents".