The names of the richest Bulgarians – the billionaire brothers Kiril and Georgi Domuschievi – were implicated, albeit indirectly, in a gigantic international drug scandal, after on December 19 the police in Ireland found 300 kilograms of cocaine on their ship “Verila” and charged two of the 17- member of the Bulgarian crew. The arrested sailors are the 35-year-old chief mechanic of the ship “Verila” Kamen Petkov and 32-year-old Nikola Penchev, and other sailors from the ship are expected to be charged with drug trafficking in the coming days. The ship’s captain will also be brought under judicial responsibility, and the investigators are still looking for evidence of his physical involvement in the drug deal.
The scandal with the cocaine cargo discovered on the ship “Verila” will certainly cause enormous image and financial damage to the brothers Kiril and Georgi Domuschievi, although it is unlikely that the richest Bulgarians are involved in the affair, local criminologists comment. Customs and police authorities in Canada and the United States are expected to launch inspections of Domuschievi’s business because of suspicions that their ship was used to traffic tons of drugs from South America to Canada and Europe. Before calling at the port of Foynes on Ireland’s west coast, the Maltese-flagged vessel called at Quebec, Canada, having previously departed from Santos, southern Brazil. The Verilla has also docked in Hamilton on Lake Ontario to sail on December 8 for Europe, crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
The Domuschievi brothers own pharmaceutical plants in Canada and America through their company Huvepharma. It is known that the bosses of the hegemon in the native football “Ludogorets” are the owners of the factories “Laurinburg” in North Carolina, “Longmont” in Colorado and “Van Buren” in Arkansas, where more than 200 people work. Antibiotics, vaccines, nutritional supplements and enzymes are produced there.
In 2019, Kiril Domuschiev was proclaimed an honorary citizen of the state of Nebraska by the governor. This spring, at the invitation of Kiril Domuschiev, American President (1993-2001) Bill Clinton is visiting Bulgaria.
A version has already appeared in the media in Ireland, released by the local police, that the seized cocaine cargo of “Verila” is owned by the international drug cartel “Kinahan”, founded by the Irishman Christian Kinahan in the late 1990s. To date, Kinahan Sr., along with his two sons Daniel and Christy, runs a drug empire worth over $1 billion, and the FBI is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrests of the Irish crime family.
“The leading version of the investigators in Ireland is that the Kinahan clan is behind the seized cocaine shipment on the Verilla ship. It is believed that the drugs were loaded at the port of Santos, Brazil, with part of the cocaine cargo unloaded in Canada and the remaining 300 kilograms to be released into the waters off Ireland to be later picked up by members of the clan. It is assumed that part of the crew of the Bulgarian ship “Verila” was recruited for money to transport the drugs.
It is said to be a common practice in the Kinahan clan’s operations to recruit cargo ship crews to transport large quantities of drugs, paying between $3,000 and $5,000 for each kilogram of drugs,” a police source said.
He said it was highly likely that US or other overseas services had tipped off authorities in Ireland about the Verilla’s cocaine shipment because of the cargo ship’s frequent voyages to Brazil, Canada and Europe over the past year.
“The Domuschievi brothers will lose at least 50 million euros, which is the value of their ship. He will be confiscated by the authorities in Ireland for transporting drugs,” said the MIA source. According to him, the police inspectors who are leading the investigation in Ireland have sought help from Bulgaria to establish the possible complicity of the sailors from the ship “Verila” with native drug traffickers of an international scale.
In his only statement so far, the owner of the “Verila” ship, Kiril Domuschiev, defined as insinuations and lies the information that appeared that the former fitness instructor of the “Ludogorets” Nikolay Penchev was among the arrested sailors.
“He is currently a firefighter in London, he has no connection with the ship. The criminal records of the detained sailors are clean, otherwise there is no way they will be put on our ship. It’s not my job to give interviews.
Every company has its operational management and they decide,” Kiril Domuschiev was quoted by journalist Sonia Koltuklieva. According to experts, in reality it is a matter of matching the names with a difference of one letter. The detainee is Nikola Penchev, not Nikolay Penchev, who years ago actually worked as a fitness instructor for Ludogorets”.
According to data from the police investigation, which is being conducted in Ireland, the cocaine was detected on the Verilla ship with the help of police dogs, and the vessel had previously passed as many as 6 customs checks. This has raised suspicions that the Limerick Port Authority may also be involved in drug trafficking.
The 300 kilos of cocaine found were divided into six 50 kg packages wrapped in nylon, with buoyancy ensured by life jackets and GPS transmitters attached to each package. They believe that the smugglers intended to dump the drugs into the sea for others to collect. The fact that the drugs were equipped with buoyancy aids and GPS trackers suggests that they were not intended for import into Foynes. It is not clear whether other quantities have already been left at sea, but speculation is that
the ship “Verila” was carrying much more drugs than the 300 kilos seized.
The ship has undergone inspections, including one by Russian authorities in the Black Sea last February, one by the US Coast Guard in Tampa, Florida last July and one by Canadian authorities in Hamilton last August. None of the inspections revealed any deficiencies.
Until now, the arrested sailors Kamen Petkov and Nikolay Penchev have refused to cooperate with the investigation. They were caught as drug traffickers thanks to DNA material found on the packages of cocaine. However, the Irish police believe that other crew members are also involved in the cocaine trafficking, as it was not within the power of just two sailors to put the packages of cocaine into the sea, which were subsequently collected by the traffickers.
The brothers Kiril and Georgi Domuschievi became the owners of the denationalized company “Bulgarian Black Sea Fleet” (BMF) in 2008. The report of the shipping company for last year shows BGN 202 million in revenue and BGN 148 million in profit, with the company’s profitability being close to 73 BGN million. The Domuschievis own a total of 32 ships, all of their vessels sailing under Maltese flags.
The BMF published an official position on the investigation in Ireland, stating that at the moment there is only information that the vessel has been detained and a specialized police operation is being carried out to search it in connection with suspicions of its involvement in trafficking.
“If this is proven in the relevant due process, it will constitute a serious crime and at the same time a gross violation of the values, internal rules, policies and procedures of the Bulgarian Navy Shipping Company AD, which is a company with a 131-year history and an impeccable reputation in the international shipping,” the company said, assuring that it would refuse full cooperation to the authorities to reveal the truth and punish those responsible.
Source: Weekend, crimesbg.com
2023-12-29 16:00:00
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