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Anton Petrov aka "The Hamster" is hiding his face during Saturday's court hearing when he and four other bosses of "The Impudent" gang were left behind bars over kidnappings. Photo by BGNES
One of the five persons presented by the Interior Ministry as the bosses of the recently arrested high-profile kidnappers’ gang – Anton Petrov, aka “The Hamster”, is reported to have political connections.
Volen Siderov, leader of the nationalist “Ataka” party, claimed in an interview for Nova TV that Petrov was involved in buying votes and “campaign” for the conservative party RZS (“Order, Law, Justice”) on the last Parliamentary Elections in July 2009. Siderov was recently involved in a scandal with the RZS leader Yane Yanev in which he insulted Yanev as a man “dependent on his homosexual addictions”.
Bulgaria’s Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, who spoke on Nova TV after Siderov, declined to comment these statements saying that the police were investigating the activities of the entire gang which was busted in a special operation codenamed “The Impudent”. Part of the police evidence against Petrov is the fact that a marked banknote from the ransom recently paid for Rumen Guninski Jr, who spent 40 days in captivity in October-November 2009, has been found in the purse of Petrov’s wife.
According to the Dnevnik Daily, in 2007 the Hamster registered a joint company called VAZ 07 Ltd together with the former MP from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Zahari Zahariev, who is still a member of the Sofia Organization of the BSP.
The Hamster also owns 34% of a security firm called “Spartak Security”; the rest of it is owned by “Lev Corporation” which according to unconfirmed media reports is close to former agent of the State National Security Agency DANS, Alexey Petrov. The Hamster is also a member of the board of directors of “Galileo.BG” Jsc, whose activities have to do with electronic systems for positioning and control, and the chair of the Levski Spartak karate club in Sofia.
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