The director of the customs office in Plovdiv, Miroslav Belyashki, was detained minutes ago. This is reported by BNT, citing its sources.
Belyashki was arrested for patronizing a new cigarette smuggling channel, connected to the mythical "cigarette king" Nikola Nikolov – Pascal, who has been hiding from justice in Serbia for months.
There is currently no official information about the operation, but early this morning special forces entered the building of the "Plovdiv" Territorial Directorate and began searching the office of the director, Miroslav Belyashki. Anti-mafia officers are also searching Belyashki's home.
The arrested director of the customs agency in Plovdiv was appointed to the post in mid-March 2024. by the then director of the "Customs" Agency Petya Bankova, who was arrested two weeks later, along with father and son Marin and Stefan Dimitrov, who were charged with Pascal's smuggling channels. The investigation against Bankova found that she agreed to replace regional heads of customs under pressure from the then Minister of Finance Assen Vassilev. The co-chairman of "We Continue the Change" denies the charges.
Sources from the Plovdiv customs commented that Miroslav Belyashki, who was arrested earlier today, personally tried to protect the passage of a TIR truck with smuggled cigarettes, which was supposed to transit through our country. At the "Kapitan Andreevo" customs checkpoint, following a signal from foreign services, a truck with cigarettes was stopped.
Although "Kapitan Andreevo" to the Territorial Directorate of Customs in Burgas, Belyashki appeared at the border, who came with two other armed officers, also wearing bulletproof vests, and tried to free the stopped truck and the transported goods, explaining that they should be accepted and escorted to the customs in Vidin and from there exported to Romania. Operational information indicates that in this way at least 15 trucks with smuggled cigarettes were to pass through the country, whose final destination was Romania.
In the past, Martin Belyashki was a PR person for the previous mayor of Plovdiv Zdravko Dimitrov, and the woman he lives with on a family basis – Margarita Boycheva, has been associated with various political parties. Most recently, Boycheva worked in the Regional Administration – Plovdiv under the mandate of "Continue the Change".