Bulgaria: Former MEP Slavi Binev shot dead in Sofia – three suspects detained
The businessman and head of Bulgaria's taekwondo federation was killed by a gunshot to the head at his home in Sofia. Police detained three suspects.
Archive image · Photo: Ppktechno / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Bulgarian businessman and former member of the European Parliament Slavcho "Slavi" Binev was shot dead at his home in Sofia on Saturday morning, acting Interior Ministry Secretary General Lyubomir Nikolov said. The Sofia City Prosecutor's Office told broadcaster bTV the killing took place around 10 a.m. local time (0700 GMT). According to Sega, the emergency call came in at 10:28 a.m. from an acquaintance who heard a shot and saw three men drive off in a Lexus. Paramedics could only confirm the death of the 60-year-old, who had a gunshot wound to the head.
About 90 minutes later, police detained three suspects on the Trakia motorway near the Trayanovi Vrata tunnel and seized two pistols. Nikolov said the men run a construction company in Sofia and were frequent guests of Binev. "It does not have the character of a contract killing," he said, adding that they had been invited into the house. The ministry's main line of inquiry is unsettled financial dealings. No charges have been filed so far, and the suspects are presumed innocent.
Binev, born in 1965, was the 1992 European taekwondo champion and most recently president of the Bulgarian Taekwondo Federation and first vice president of the European Taekwondo Union. He was elected to the European Parliament for the Ataka party in 2007 and entered Bulgaria's parliament on the NFSB list in 2014. On Saturday he had been due to open a taekwondo tournament with Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev; the opening was cancelled. TERRA WORLD NEWS is following the story.