[1][2] Throughout his career, he established close ties with members of the Committee for State Security(CSS) and founded Multigroup, an organization infamous for its nefarious activities such as money laundering, extortion, fraud, illegal car purchases and contract killings.
Iliya Pavlov also played a critical role during the transition of Bulgaria from Socialism to Democracy by taking advantage of the privatization of the previously state-owned industries.
In this way, Pavlov managed to accumulate a great fortune and was even ranked the eighth richest man in Central and Eastern Europe by the Polish magazine Wprost in 2002.
[6] The day before his death, he had testified in the trial of the accused murderers of Andrey Lukanov, Bulgaria's first prime minister after the fall of communism who died in 1996.
[9] Pavlov was a former Bulgarian wrestling champion [citation needed] who graduated from the National Sports Academy in Sofia.