The criminal group detained on Trakia motorway on Saturday night (16th of September) has been involved in drug distribution, murders and smuggling, the Ministry of Interior and the Prosecutor's office said on 19th of September, reported BNT. 

Five people were detained. They are responsible for the murder of a taxi driver in Nadezhda neighbourhood, Sofia, in February this year. The group was also involved in the smuggling of 14 tonnes of hashish in 2012.

The memebers of the criminal group followed all the rules of conspiracy and the work on identifying them has been quite difficult, the chief secretary of the Ministry of Interior Mladen Marinov said.

Two of them were detained for 72 hours. Requests for detention in custody were lodged for the other three. The authorities carried out 25 searches and found smuggled cigarettes, SIM cards and cocaine. The murdered taxi driver was part of the group, most likely considered a “weak link”, and was therefore liquidated, the investigators further explained.

Ivan Geshev, Head of the Specialised Prosecutor's Office: As a result of the actions in our pre-trial proceedings, a huge amount of smuggeled cigarettes - one container – was seaized at Varna-West port. This is approximately one TIR lorry full of cigarettes.. More than 25 searches of persons, cars and locations were conducted.

Mladen Marinov, Chief Secretary of the Ministry of Interior: The group is really exceptionally well organized. The murder of the taxi driver Borislav shows that nothing stopped them if there was a threat of leakage of information from members of the group and proceeded to murder of such persons. There were other cases when they organized force actions against group members or contractors when they considered there was a threat to the group's activities, he said.