Bulgarian drug lord convicted in three EU countries turns himself in

4 months ago 16

International crime boss Evelin “Brendo” Banev, convicted of cocaine trafficking and money laundering in Bulgaria, Romania and Italy, voluntarily surrendered to Bulgarian authorities on Monday morning, with border police investigating how he entered the country.

Shortly after being sentenced in Bulgaria in 2018 to six years in prison for laundering money from drug trafficking, Brendo disappeared, and Bulgarian authorities put him on an international wanted list.

But Brendo walked into Sofia’s central prison on Monday morning with a lawyer, the Justice Ministry said.

As he was on an international wanted list, border police are also investigating how he entered Bulgaria to turn himself in.

Brendo was also sentenced to 10 years by Romanian authorities and 20 years by Italy in the Cocaine Kings scandal. Brendo is now expected to ask for his sentences to be combined and served in Bulgaria.

In September 2021, Ukrainian police arrested Brendo near Kyiv and launched an investigation into the drug lab found in the house where he was staying with false documents, as announced by Ukrainian police.

In February 2022, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung found that Brendo had 84 accounts and eight safes as part of an investigation into thousands of suspicious accounts at Swiss bank Credit Suisse.

According to the newspaper, Brendo has at least 55 million Swiss francs in Swiss bank accounts – information that became public during the bank’s trial, in which it is accused of inadvertently aiding money laundering.

In the case against Credit Suisse, Swiss prosecutors found that Brendo, known at the bank as “il nonno” or “the grandfather”, kept the profits of a Bulgarian drug cartel in the bank.

While the bank has denied the allegations of complicity, claiming that an employee, also of Bulgarian origin, approved the opening of many accounts with dubious origins, lawyers in the case successfully argued that it was impossible for such sums to be approved by low-level management and that the top management are responsible.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)