Businessman Alexey Petrov killed in Sofia

Businessman Alexey Petrov was shot dead in Sofia's Dragalevtsi suburb at 12:20 pm on Wednesday, the Interior Ministry said. A 48-year-old female companion is reported injured in the shooting and taken to Sofia's Pirogov emergency hospital with a gunshot wound.

Petrov was a former commando, a security expert, university professor. He grew to become a major business owner who went in and out of public life back in the years. He was a co-founder of the Lev Ins insurance company and is believed to have kept his ownership, only informally. The company is among the leading insurers on the Bulgarian market. They put out a brief message of condolences to Petrov's family, describing him as "our colleague, father and good friend".

Pre-trial proceedings have been initiated by the Sofia City Prosecution Office. 

Sofia City Prosecutor Iliana Kirilova told the press that Alexey Petrov’s guards are being questioned. 

Interior Ministry Chief Commissioner Peter Todorov said that Petrov was on a trek in the mountains with the woman and three bodyguards. 

He also said that a task force has been set up with the participation of many Interior Ministry services, to coordinate the investigation.

The head of the Sofia Directorate of the Interior, Lyubomir Nikolov, said that Petrov was shot at in a wooded area near a trail which is believed to have been on an usual route for him.

Police are also trying to establish any other witnesses who were in the area at the time of the attack. 

“It is early days to build theories and speculate on who may have been the perpetrator,” said Nikolov.

Police said they have blocked key locations in Sofia for the need of the investigation into Petrov’s assassination.

Pirogov Director Valentin Dimitrov told a news conference that Petrov's female companion was shot in the chest. She was unresponsive when she was taken to hospital and had to be intubated. Her identity is yet to be established, according to Dimitrov. 

Who is Petrov

Alexey Petrov was born on April 23, 1962 in Teteven (northcentral Bulgaria). He graduated from the police academy in Pazardzhik in 1981. Later he graduated from the present-day University of National and World Economy, where he started teaching in the late 1990s. 

Petrov was found to have been a full-time employee of the communist-era State Security service. 

He was employed as a commando in the Interior Ministry’s anti-terror squad. He left the Interior Ministry's system on his own accord and established a union of ex-commandos. He was president of the Bulgarian National Karate Federation, Executive Director of the Union for Private Economic Enterprise, sat on the Supervisory Board of the National Social Security Institute, was an advisor to the Chairman of the State Agency for National Security (until August 2009). 

He started a private business in Sofia and was a partner in over 50 companies by 2002.

Petrov was the target of assassination attempts in 1999, 2002 and 2015 and survived all of them. A man was sentenced as an aider in the 2015 attempt and got 10 years in prison but was released two years earlier. Another aider and two perpetrators were never caught.

On February 10, 2010, Petrov was arrested during an operation code-named Octopus against a criminal group engaged in extortion, forced debt collection and racketeering, illegal use of persons for paid sexual services, distribution of narcotics, influence peddling, money laundering, income evasion, non-payment of taxes and VAT evasion from the state budget. He was released on bail.

He ran for president in 2011 (nominated by a nominating committee).