A court in Yambol has ordered 40-year-old truck driver Doychin Petrov held in custody for good. Border police caught him at the Lesovo checkpoint with cocaine and marijuana worth more than 2.2m euros. The Yambol regional prosecutor's office asked for him to be remanded in custody, and the court agreed after hearing both sides.
Petrov, who lives in Ravda, near Burgas, was arrested on 25 September.
Prosecutor Tashko Stamatov said the charge carries a sentence of 15 to 20 years in prison, plus a fine of between 102,258.37 and 153,387.56 euros.
Prosecutors asked for him to be held in custody because he might flee or commit new crimes, pointing to the evidence gathered so far and to the fact that Petrov has a criminal record.
His defense asked for house arrest instead. His lawyers said the case file has no expert report on the field test and no control sheet from the scale used to weigh the drugs. Petrov himself told the court he looks after his 7-year-old child.
"I rule out any chance of me trying to hide or leave the country. I have no way to do that," he told the court.
The drugs were hidden in the truck's fuel tank. Stefan Bakalov, deputy director of the Customs Agency, said the hiding place had been built specially, and the tank itself was wrapped in a lead lining to fool the X-ray scanner.
The case came to light in a joint operation by the GDBOP organized crime unit and the Customs Agency. At a briefing at the border crossing on Saturday, GDBOP deputy director senior commissioner Darin Kostov said investigators are still carrying out searches and other steps at various locations around the country. Yambol regional prosecutor Doychin Doychev also spoke to reporters.
Officials said at the briefing that the operation had shut down a drug trafficking route.