Bulgarian organised crime traces its roots to the 1960s, with import-export companies such as Kintex (owned by Bulgaria's secret police- the State Security agency) profiting from illegal export of weapons and other contraband goods such as amphetamines and cigarettes to terrorists and political groups in the Middle East and North Africa.
Kintex's smuggling activities were covered in the Turkish press and first mentioned in CIA documents following the assassination attempt on pope John Paul II.
During the late communist period, figures such as Illia Pavlov and Ismet Turkmen Shaban "The Big Fatik" were known to have conducted contraband activities and set up smuggling channels across Europe & the Middle East with the aid and protection of Bulgaria's state security.
[5] Since the fall of communism in 1989, there have been more than 250 high rank heads mafia-style contract killings in Bulgaria, frequently perpetrated in the centre of the capital, Sofia, in broad daylight.
[6] Some of the most prominent assassination targets of recent years (in chronological order): Krasimir kamenov- Bulgarian mobster May 2023 In 2006, the EU dispatched the head of Germany's criminal investigation office Klaus Jansen to assess Bulgaria's progress in fighting organized crime.
In a reaction to the report, Interior Minister Rumen Petkov described the findings as exaggerated and protested against Jansen's way of presenting the situation in Bulgaria which, in his words, demonstrated his incompetence.
The Iliev brothers, Krasimir "Big Margin" Marinov and Iliya Pavlov were all students of the school for future champions "Olympic Hopes" (Bulgarian: "Олимпийски надежди").