Businessman Yordan Harasimov, who was blown up in his car in Bulgaria's Varna on Friday, had a long-time conflict with a former business partner, Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov announced.

The explosion occurred at a major downtown Varna crossroads near the Varna University of Economics shortly after 8 am on Friday.

After the explosion the car, an Audi with Varna license plates, crashed into a traffic light pole. The driver, Yordan Harasimov himself, was rushed to the St. Anna Hospital but later died in the emergency room.

Yordan Harasimov, 52, was the major trader of fish products on the Northern Bulgarian Black Sea coast, and one of the largest in Bulgaria.

Harasimov's company "Sever Export" trades with fish, fish products, and veined rapa whelk, a species of predatory sea snails abundant in the Black Sea. It is based in Varna's Asparuhovo quarter.

Sever Export owns its own fishing vessels, and exports frozen fish and veined rapa whelk products to Japan, the USA, South Korea, Vietnam, and Turkey.

The company's total staff is about 150 people; the Sever Export office was sealed by the police in Varna shortly after Harasimov's murder. Sever (i.e. "North") was founded in 1995 by four partners, with Harasimov becoming the president of the firm.

"He had conflicts in his business in the past 10 years. He had a partner with whom he parted 5-6 years ago, and they complained about one another to the policy. I just don't want to go into detail now because we are at the start of the investigation," Bulgaria's Interior Minister said, as cited by Focus.

Tsvetanov said Harasimov's car was blown up with a "serious quantity of explosive" but the police are still investigating its type.

Shortly before Tsvetanov's comments Interior Ministry officials refused to reveal any details about the investigation saying only that they had several scenarios about who might be behind Harasimov's murder.

The Varna car blast seems like a reminiscence of Bulgaria's mobster wars in the 1990s when former professional wrestlers dominated the powerful Bulgarian underground.

Yordan Harasimov is a former Greco-Roman wrestler and a long-time chair of the Varna Greco-Roman wrestling club "Lokomotiv 93".