Car of missing former head of Bulgarian security agency entered Greece – reports

The car in which the missing former head of Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security Petko Sertov was travelling crossed the border into Greece on December at about 8pm, a few hours after he left his Sofia home, reports on December 12 said.

Media reports claimed that a review of recordings from cameras at the Kulata border checkpoint between Bulgaria and Greece had established that this was the car in which Sertov had been travelling.

Earlier reports said that Sertov, officially missing since December 6 and posted as a missing person on the Interpol website on December 9, had been travelling alone.

On December 10, the Interior Ministry said that it had used a helicopter to search for the car in southern Bulgarian near the Petrich region, where Sertov is said to have been spotted some hours after leaving home, but with no result.

The Interior Ministry had hinted that Sertov could be in Greece. As two European Union countries, with citizens able to cross the border using only official identity cards, Bulgaria and Greece do not keep records of their citizens crossing borders.

Earlier, bad weather in southern Bulgaria had hampered efforts to find Sertov.

Possible reasons for his disappearance remain a topic for a vast range of speculation in the Bulgarian-language media.

In recent years, Sertov had worked as a consultant and lawyer for various firms, including in the energy sector.

Interior Ministry chief secretary Svetozar Lazarov told reporters on December 11 that the ministry’s investigators had information on Sertov’s meetings, including about specific places, but did not want to disclose details.

Separately, Bulgarian-language media reports said that Sertov’s movements in the car after leaving his home in Sofia could not be tracked effectively because for more than six months, Interior Ministry cameras in the capital city had made no recordings because the ministry had unpaid bills adding up to close to 500 000 leva owed to the support company.

The only means of tracing Sertov’s movements on December 5 had been footage from private security cameras at a location near his home.

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The Sofia Globe staff

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