The shooting of mayor #1 in Nessebar is one of the most mysterious murders in Bulgaria
One of the most mysterious murders on the Black Sea remains unsolved to this day. Seven bullets hit Dimitar Yankov – chairman of the Municipal Council of Nessebar and the largest hotelier in Sunny Beach.
The killer has not been found, the guarantor can be any of the businessman’s enemies, and they are many.
The murder stopped him from realizing one of his dreams – to be the mayor of Nessebar. The attempt was made a few months before the local elections, but the motive was not political, but economic, criminologists claim, writes in “Trud”.
On the evening of May 9, 2007, as almost every other day, Dimitar Yankov went to his lover Krasimira Marinova. This time he is unguarded. Around 9:30 p.m., the mayor parked his luxury Jeep “Porsche Cayenne” in front of her home on Gladstone Street in Burgas.
He prepares to get out when a thin man approaches the vehicle and fires. Exactly 7 times. All bullets hit the victim’s head. After that, the killer calmly leaves. The number of shots is hardly random. There are seven Yankov hotels in Sunny Beach.
He is famous as the first privatizer in the resort after buying the Chrysanthemum Hotel. The man, who will later be tempted by politics, also owns dozens of the most profitable establishments in the expensive resort.
However, the money is not enough for Yankov to be completely happy. He also needs power in order to protect and develop what he has acquired, after Sunny Beach becomes an appetizing bite for the groups in Sofia as well.
As chairman of the local municipal council, Yankov made many enemies who had their eye on the resort. That’s why forensic experts never came to a clear version of the murder, although there were several reliable witnesses on the fatal night.
Two people – a salesman and a customer in a neighboring store saw the shooting and remembered well the figure and other details about the killer. An elderly woman throwing trash gets away with it seconds after the shooting.
Another passer-by notices the killer get into a car that drives off in a known direction. The weapon was also found, which was discarded in a container not far from the scene of the crime.
This is a “Baikal” gas pistol, converted into a combat one. The killer didn’t even bother to erase his fingerprints. The shooter’s DNA was also isolated, but this did not help in locating him.
There are no data of him in the array of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Criminalists set out to destroy the most logical version – economic interests. It turns out that Yankov had a conflict with prominent sikajis over a dispute over the boundaries of the beach concession.
The pools of two of his hotels were built in the area that the Sofia Mutts got and so they gave him an ultimatum – either 100,000 euros in annual rent for the pools or tear them down.
He naturally refuses, rudely at that, but the investigators find no evidence that this power group is behind the murder.
Facts about the quarrels between Yankov and his former friend and colleague Nikolay Trifonov are being discovered. The two initially shared power in the city – Trifonov was the mayor, and Yankov – the chairman of the Municipal Council from the list of the Free Radical Democratic Party. Gradually, however, enmity begins between them and mutual threats to kill.
The reason, according to the locals, is that Yankov wanted all the goods around the coast in the municipality to remain for the local people, while Trifonov was of a different opinion, and pressured by Sofia to impose a powerful external group.
The mayor could not stand the pressure and left his post a few months before the shooting, shortly after he was sent to work at the Bulgarian consulate in Odessa. According to acquaintances, he feared for his life because of Yankov’s threats.
After Trifonov retires, privatizer #1 decides that his wish to become the mayor of Nessebar will finally come true. His close friend Magdalena Manduleva was chosen as the temporary acting official, and so Yankov began to become the full-fledged master of the area.
In Nessebar and Sunny Beach they still remember that Yankov started his career as a piccolo under socialism. He made his first big purchase in 1994 with the money of his wife, Regina Stein, who received an inheritance.
He met her in Germany while working in a shipyard there. Then he began to buy lots and build several more buildings, took properties under lease, which then became his, until he became the largest private owner in the resort. However, this costs him a lot of nerves and threats.
It is said that already in the mid-1990s, Yankov saw in the face of his prodigal Dimitar Zhelyazkov – Mityo Ochite, a reliable defender against the attacks from Sofia.
At that time, Mityo Ochite was from VIS, but that did not prevent the two from taking a shower. In 1997, a grenade exploded on the terrace of the residence of the then mayor of Nessebar, Zivko Georgiev.
The physical perpetrator was caught – this is Petko Krumov-Cambodian. During the interrogations, he claimed that it was Dimitar Yankov who was the guarantor of the attempt and the large privatizer and lessee was briefly detained.
Soon after, however, the Cambodian was found charred in a mysterious fire in the secret villa where he was staying. The investigation went into a loop, and Yankov hired Mityo Ochite and a few other tough guys as security.
It is said that, with the tacit help of his new patron, Ochite quickly made a solid career as a Tartor of the Southern Black Sea.
A month before Yankov’s murder in 2007, Mityo Ochite was arrested. The mayor becomes nervous, claims that he expects his hotels to be attacked.
However, he did not think that they would affect his life and that is why on the fateful night he went alone to his great love, to whom he gave a unique “Bentley” and an extremely expensive maisonette in the center of Burgas. However, the killer, who has studied his habits in detail, is already waiting for him there. And who will remain unknown.
From a piccolo to the biggest bar in Sunny Beach
Dimitar Yankov’s empire not only did not fall apart after his death, but continued to flourish. It is managed by his daughter Ivalina, who heads the largest hotel company on the Southern Black Sea coast, Sunny Beach Hotel Holdings AD.
His wife, the German Regina, is a member of the board of directors together with Yankov’s partner and his close friend, Yordan Yordanov.
Yankov starts his business from scratch. For many years he was a piper, he also worked as a bartender, but after the changes on the Tenth of November, he saw his chance to get rich. As early as 1989, he became the lessee of the bar of the Pomorie Hotel at that time, and then, in partnership, took over the lease of the Burgas hotel complex.
He is the chairman of the Union of Tenants and Tenants in Sunny Beach. The annual turnover of his companies is about BGN 100 million, he employed 1,000 people.
His name was involved in almost all the major scandals in the complex, including the attempted secret privatization of 18 hotels together with the infamous construction pyramid boss Solomon Angel.
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