Yuriy Galev, president of the Rilski Sportist football club and nationalist municipal councilor in the town of Samokov, who was shot early on Sunday, continues to be in critical condition, doctors said.

The patient is expected to spend ten days in the reanimation unit following two life-saving surgeries, which he underwent at the Pirogov hospital, shortly after the shooting.

A check has shown that Galev is one of those Bulgarian, who refuse to pay the obligatory health insurance payments.

Talking to the private TV channel bTV, Galev’s former wife Elizabeth Mihaylova, denied reports that suggested a link between the assassination attempt and Galev’s neighbor Stoyan Stoyanov, who was recently killed.

The two men are known to have been trading in timber and there are suspicions that a wrangling over the redistribution of the market may have fuelled hatred between them.

“Yuriy has never had business ties with Stoyan,” Mihaylova said on Monday morning.

Galev was brought to the Pirogov hospital in Sofia with an ambulance from Samokov at about 6 am Sunday, according to the Interior Ministry

Unofficial reports say unknown men shot at his car. Galev has five gunshot wounds in the stomach and the limbs.

Galev is notorious in Samokov for a number of criminal acts. The latest one was in February when Galev and several of his associates beat two ski lift guards in the Borovets mountain resort after the latter refused to let his son ride the lift for free.

In the wake of this incident, the local police arrested four of Galev's men for arson of an office of the Borosport firm, which operates the ski lift.

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