The operation, which covered 44 sites, 30 searches, including offices of commercial companies, was carried out within the framework of 4 investigations. The cases monitored by the SGP are subject to an investigation for money laundering. This was announced at a briefing by Desislava Petrova from the SGP on the occasion of the coordinated operation of the SGP, SRP, SANS, DGDOP-MV, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of Justice, aimed at perpetrators of crimes against intellectual property on the Internet. The operation was also carried out with the assistance of Europol.
The addresses that were checked on the territory of Bulgaria are four - Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas and Pernik. Four people were detained, and three of them were charged. The three defendants have businesses – some of them have participated in the implementation of financial transactions.
Suspicious financial flows in and outside the European Union are being checked. “A complex computer-technical examination has already been ordered of all objects that were seized in these cases during last week's operation and contain computer and information data“, added Petrova.
The prosecutor from the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office Georgi Kodzhanikolov explained that the cases monitored by the SRP are related to the creation and maintenance of information systems that facilitate the distribution and exchange of copyright objects. “In the cases monitored by the SRP, three individuals have been brought forward as defendants“, announced Kodzhanikolov.
And he noted that the goal is not simply to suspend the activities of specific torrent sites, but to remove Bulgaria from the list of countries that do not comply with copyright protection rules.
“Bulgaria has been on List 301 (in the fight against online piracy) for several years only by European countries and this creates a negative image of the country. We have been repeatedly informed that as long as such large pirate platforms operate, our country cannot be removed from List 301 while it continues to tolerate online piracy“, said Svetoslav Vassilev from the National Police.“
According to him, for this reason, the leadership of the prosecutor's office decided in the summer of last year to create a “Cybercrimes“ sector within the investigative department of the SGP. “A number of meetings were held and it was decided to terminate this activity. This is a matter that also concerns national security“, he said.
And he explained that three existing pre-trial proceedings had been merged into one. “On January 29, 2026, numerous data on crimes were established – there is data on transactions carried out by one of the companies related to the accused persons to a Bulgarian citizen who is currently serving a 12-year sentence in the US for money laundering through crypto assets“, Vassilev revealed.
We recall that a week ago, law enforcement agencies from the US and Bulgaria seized the domains of some of the largest sites for sharing pirated content in our country - Zamunda, Arena and Zelka.