Nikola Nikolov-Paskal, wanted by the authorities in our country and suspected of being the number 1 smuggler, left the country with a caravan as early as March 29, BNT reported. Over the years, Pascal was an associate of the National Security Service, which was part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs until 2008. After that, he transformed and entered the National Security Service, which is now investigating the affair in the "Customs" Agency.
Nikola Nikolov entered Greece, where a BNT team discovered the caravan he was using in the yard of a hotel on the seashore.
"He is probably the only one who remained alive from the beginning of the transition and still continues to carry out this smuggling, sometimes at a small pace and with larger ones,", says Georgi Shishkov, former head of customs in Svilengrad.
Few of those who have investigated smuggling channels over the years agree to talk about Nikola Nikolov - Pascal. However, all claim that the alleged smuggler number 1 still manages to survive and all say that since the late 1990s he has been living mostly in Greece, on the coast near Kavala.
Pascal is not at the hotel, which is claimed to be owned by him through impersonators. According to the site, this hotel is open and accepting tourists. But apparently it is quite difficult to manage to settle and sleep in the hotel because it is closed and its entrance is blocked by a container.
It turned out that since April 4th, the offers for this hotel have been removed from all booking sites. A room cannot be reserved even for the traditional May holidays in this part of the Aegean.
Late in the evening, only one of the rooms in the hotel is lit, but a hooded security guard guards the building. A dirt road leads to a house next door, where Pascal is also reported to reside, but it is also locked. The last address at which Nikola Nikolov was registered in Bulgaria was in Haskovo. He was wanted there in 1998, when they seized three cartons of cigarettes and one carton of chicken legs from his smuggling channel.
"When I was the head of customs, there was a head of RDVR Haskovo who really wanted to have a regime officer in customs. This is a police officer who is in the Customs. There, in some form, the great chiefs agreed, and this man came. I didn't accept him, I never got to know him, but there what should work - worked. When the time came for the development of the canal and the cigarette trucks were caught, he was the man who escorted the trucks. And he turned out to be a person from State Security," said Georgi Shishkov, former head of customs in Svilengrad.
From his native Merichleri, the story of the alleged number one smuggler, Nikola Nikolov - Pascal passes through Dimitrovgrad, State Security, Haskovo, Orestiada, dock number 5 of the port of Piraeus, Thessaloniki and reaches Kavala.
It turns out that Nikolov was recruited into State Security while still in the barracks, and immediately after that was assigned to the "Captain Andreevo" border post. There he worked on the captagon channel in the mid-1980s. After that, he went undercover and was transferred as a truck driver and thus mastered the entire channel from Bulgaria through Turkey to the Middle East.
"He drove trucks, there he got the contacts and understood what it was about, they trained him and they are starting to raise him in the hierarchy. Activity with Greek political emigrants is starting," explained Georgi Shishkov, former head of Svilengrad customs. Not a small part of the Greek communists immigrated to Bulgaria., to Russia and other so-called countries. "fraternal" countries at that time.
It was the contacts with the Greek communists that proved to be key for Pascal in the early 1990s.
"They begin to organize the transfer of illegal goods. And mostly they focus on the cigarette market. They register companies, the first company is between Pascal and an elderly Greek citizen in Orestiada. A relative of this Greek citizen in Thessaloniki opened a representative office in the Thessaloniki duty-free zone and began transporting cigarettes from Cyprus, the Thessaloniki duty-free zone, where they transshipped and entered Bulgaria," explained Georgi Shishkov.
In 1998, there was an operation against Pascal's channel, in which it turned out that Ercan Rashid - Rocco was also involved. Three trucks with cigarettes were detained, but they disappeared from a customs warehouse. And the entire pre-trial proceedings ended up in the trunk of another detained at the beginning of April - Marin Dimitrov - Iarata. In 2007 - 2008, Dimitrov headed the Fisheries and Aquaculture Agency. There are data that during this period, with the cutters of the Pascal Agency, he was illegally transporting gold jewelry.