Aleksei Petrov

Aleksei Iliyev Petrov (; 23 April 1962 – 16 August 2023) was a Bulgarian oligarch. He was a candidate in the 2011 Bulgarian presidential election and a rival to former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. He was considered to be the head of Order, Law and Justice and the weekly tabloid Galeria.

Biography Born in Babintsi on 23 April 1962, Petrov had a fortune of "hundreds of millions of dollars" according to Cablegate. Todor Zhivkov had tasked him with suppressing Muslim activists who were considered pro-Turkish. On 16 December 2002, he filed a complaint against a former deputy for defamation. The deputy had implicated him in a murder and dealings with the Serbian mafia, shortly after the assassination of military prosecutor Nikolai Kolev. Although he was close to Chief Prosecutor Nikola Filchev, his complaints were dismissed, and a final appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was dismissed in November 2010.

On 10 February 2010, Petrov was detained on the allegation that he was the leader of the criminal group "Octopus", which had engaged in racketeering and extortion. In October 2010, he was placed on house arrest, while his charges were reduced to racketeering and extortion against two individuals in 1998 and 2000. In February 2014, the investigation into his activities was terminated and the prosecutor's office was unable to find sufficient evidence to take him to court. On 29 October 2015, another assassination attempt against him was carried out, this time using a grenade launcher, although the operation failed. In July 2021, Petrov was officially acquitted in the "Octopus" case.

On 16 August 2023, Petrov was shot with a rifle while on a walk in Sofia, and died immediately. He was 61.