What are the possible hypotheses about Alexey Petrov's murder?

What are the possible versions of Alexey Petrov's murder - according to forensic analysts, the motive for the crime could be hidden in the past and it could be about money. Other versions - revenge or influence on an issue that is currently topical.

Businessman Alexey Petrov shot dead in Sofia

According to people who have followed high-profile murders in recent years, the motive for the crime could range from unresolved old scores to financial issues and influence. In all likelihood, the killing was well planned by researching the victim's habits beforehand.

According to experts, the trigger was pulled by a professional killer who had carefully prepared everything - a suitable weapon, a convenient forest area providing good cover, a route to withdraw from the scene. Like many other such cases, the physical perpetrator and the person who ordered the murder are different figures.

A walk in the foothills of the Vitosha Mountains that ended with bullets and blood. For some analysts, a foretold death for Alexey Petrov, who went on the path from being a commando from an anti-terrorist unit to a man described as a bandit to an athlete, businessman and scientist. He survived several assassination attempts. Until today.

"He's been trying to become respectable in the recent years. He gained a lot of self-confidence, became a scientist. A security expert. He was deputy chairman of the State Agency for National Security (SANS) for a while, which is desperately ridiculous, but a fact. What happened today is not a surprise to me, because in that period around 2000, when serious capital was being distributed, he came into serious conflict with figures who were quite serious," said Slavi Angelov, an investigative journalist.

"One possible motive is some kind of revenge, the other motive is a currently actual settling of scores regarding some kind of exercise of influence - it could be business influence, it could be influence in the criminal underworld, it could even be political influence," explained Ivan Savov, a criminal analyst.

"On one hand, it's about money, it's also about ego and it's about the fact that when two people who have the ability to organise things like this and contract killings, the situation is such that one of them has to get ahead of the other, so for me it's a very expected thing and the reasons for it are in the past," Angelov added.

According to Savov, the physical perpetrator is a professional who is probably ex-military and a foreigner. He had time to prepare in advance and to study his target's habits precisely.

"The professional… you won't notice him, he won't be different from the random person you see on the street. His gun is clean, unregistered, he knows how to move around. He's probably prepared his escape route in advance. This is a guy who came in from the outside to do a job, and unfortunately, I think he's going to be another contract killer who won't be identified."

"Usually this type of crime is tied to a very complex conspiracy, with many links, intermediaries, and the goal is of course to break the chain, even to arrest a pesron or two, but never to get to the person who ordered the killing," Angelov added.

But what does the murder of a man described by many as a shady businessman say, and are the “mutri (thugs) years” (referring to the murky post-Socialist underworld of the 1990s when the “mutri” were involved in activities of varying degrees of unlawfulness) returning - questions many people are asking today.

"The “mutri” (thugs) years are not coming back because they have not gone away so much as there has always been a shadow and a doubt about whether the well-dressed businessman X we are interviewing today is not the one from those past days," Savov said.

A full stop or dot, dot dot will mark the end of this case - no one can say. And whether another hi-profile shooting will actually be solved - the ball is in investigators' court.

***

On August 16, Alexey Petrov, a businessman, an expert in security, a former State Agency for National Security (SANS) advisor, a former defendant in "Octopus" investigation into organised crime and former presidential candidate was shot dead while walking on a path in Dragalevtsi mountainside area in Vitosha mountains near Sofia. A woman who was accompanying him was admitted to “Pirogov” emergency hospital with serious gunshot injuries and underwent surgery.

Three bodyguards were accompanying Petrov at the time of the murder.