This handout photograph released by The Bulgarian Prosecutor's Office on March 16, 2021, shows fake dollar banknotes busted by Bulgarian authorities in a university print house in Sofia. - Bulgarian authorities busted a university print house in Sofia that made millions of fake euro and dollar bills, police and prosecutors announced Tuesday. (Photo by AFP)
Police in Sofia arrested a man and a woman after seizing millions of counterfeit U.S. dollar and euro bills aimed for distribution in Ukraine and western Europe, a senior Bulgarian interior ministry official said on Tuesday.
In operations carried out on Monday and Tuesday, police raided three sites in Sofia and seized fake banknotes worth $4 million and 3.6 million euros ($4.30 million), produced at a printing facility at an unnamed university in Sofia, the head of the interior ministry's unit for combating organised crime, Lubomir Yanev, said.
"We have data indicating that the detained are part of a larger scheme linked with the trafficking of counterfeit U.S. dollar bills to Ukraine and the fake euros to western Europe," Yanev told a news briefing. He did not elaborate.
In January, Bulgarian authorities charged four people after printing presses and equipment for the production of counterfeit banknotes and documents were found following searches at 30 locations across Bulgaria in a joint operation with Europol and the U.S. Secret Service.
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