Former secret agent of Bulgaria’s State National Security Agency DANS, Aleksei Petrov, may be among the men arrested overnight in the special police operation codenamed “Octopus.”

Early Wednesday morning Bulgaria’s Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov announced that a man nicknamed “The Tractor” with initials A.P. had been arrested during the Octopus operation.

Reports in the Bulgarian media over the last few weeks pointed to former top secret agent Aleksei Petrov as being the man nicknamed “The Tractor.”

“I am not going to confirm or to deny,” Minister Tsvetanov told the bTV channel Wednesday morning when asked if the former DANS agent Aleksei Petrov is the arrested man with the nickname “The Tractor.” Petrov is a former advisor of the former head of the State National Security Agency DANS, Petko Sertov.

Aleksei Petrov is a former member of the special police forces, the so called "barrets," who later became a businessman, a member of the board of an insurance company, and a professor of economics at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia. In 2002, an unsuccessful attempt was made on his life.

Aleksei Petrov’s name became publicly famous again in the spring of 2008 when it was entangled in a scandal involving former Interior Minister from the Socialist Party, Rumen Petkov.

Back then Petkov was revealed to have met with the notorious businessmen from the town of Dupnitsa, Plamen Hristov and Angel Galev, aka The Galevi Brothers (currently investigated and jailed for organized crime activities). The name of secret agent Aleksei Petrov leaked as he was also reported to have been present at the meeting.

Even though Rumen Petkov claimed he had a “working” meeting with the Galevi Brothers, i.e. in order to warn them over their activities, he resigned his position in April 2008.

Petkov was later tried for revealing the identity of the undercover DANS agent Aleksei Petrov, and was acquitted.

Aleksei Petrov quit DANS on August 31, 2009, a month after the Boyko Borisov government took office.