Sofia was the center for the production and distribution of dietary supplements distributed by an international criminal group. This was announced jointly by the General Directorate of Internal Affairs, the Sofia Regional Prosecutor's Office and the Sofia Regional Prosecutor's Office. The operation was carried out with the help of Eurojust.
Searches were carried out in over 10 premises in Sofia, Varna and Burgas. There are no Bulgarians among those detained, said the supervising prosecutor Teodora Todorova. There are detainees in Poland and Romania, where the main investigation is underway.
From 2019 to the present, the group has also operated in Hungary and Moldova. In our country, the targets were elderly people, mainly with heart problems and high blood pressure. Doctors have testified to investigators that people were advised not to take their main medications with the supplements.
The supplements seized so far were not dangerous to health: "That is, they rely on the placebo effect. The perpetrators resort to this type (criminal activity - ed. note) because they are not responsible for the fact that (the supplements sold - ed. note) contain dangerous substances," said the head of the "Economic Police" in the Directorate of Internal Affairs Ilcho Blagoev.
In this regard, prosecutor Teodora Todorova explained that in our country the pre-trial proceedings are for fraud and crimes related to the production of food supplements and their dangerous effects.
Todorova warned that criminals also take advantage of the imperfections of Bulgarian legislation related to the control that the Food Agency can exercise:
"The regime is quite light, the agency's powers are activated upon some signal", the prosecutor noted.
The pre-trial proceedings in our country were initiated after a signal from a practicing doctor and former Minister of Health that advertisements created with AI were distributing medicines in his name. However, this is not the subject of the investigation, the Directorate of Internal Affairs said.