Former Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Feim Chaushev, who resigned after an identity scandal in 2008, has been arrested on suspicions of being an intermediary in a car theft scheme.

Chaushev was arrested by the Bulgarian police Tuesday night in his capacity as an intermediary in the payment of a ransom for a stolen jeep belonging to a Turkish citizen.

The car was without insurance and was stolen on February 19 in Sofia. It costs about EUR 100 000. The Turkish owner of the car told the police he contacted Feim Chaushev asking him for help. Several days later Chaushev called him back and told him that the car can be retrieved if EUR 25 000 were paid to the theives.

In addition to Chaushev, the police also arrested a 37-year-old man named Ivaylo G. at a moment when he received the ransom of EUR 23 000 – which is how much the Turkish citizen said he managed to come up with.

The man was arrested at about 8 pm; an hour and a half later, Chaushev was arrested as he showed up for a meeting with Ivaylo G.

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov announced the police used special surveillance devices in investigating the case.

Back in 2008, Chaushev, who is an ethnic Turk, had to resign as a Deputy Foreign Minister when it was revealed that he had business relations under a different name, Petar Chaushev.

Chaushev was using a double identity that he "inherited" from the so called Revival Process – the campaign of the communist regime in the late 1980s to force Bulgarian Muslims to take up Slavic Christian names.

He resigned in April 2008 after the scandal blew wide open. As a Deputy Foreign Minister he was actively involved in the talks for the release of the Bulgarian medics sentenced in Libya by the Gaddafi dictatorship for allegedly infecting Libyan children with HIV.

Chaushev is also known to have been a collaborator of the former communist secret police State Security (DS).  

He was a member of the Stanishev Cabinet from the quota of the ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms).