The Insider: the Bulgarian businessman who was tried to be killed by Novichok was unable to receive his tests from the Finnish laboratory

Emelyan Gebrev, a Bulgarian businessman who was allegedly poisoned with a Novichok-class nerve agent in 2015, is unable to obtain samples of his tests from a Finnish lab. This was reported by The Insider and Bellingcat, citing Gebrev's correspondence.

Gebrev's poisoning

In April 2015, businessman Yemelyan Gebrev (who was also involved in the supply of weapons), his son and business partner were hospitalized with symptoms of severe poisoning. The VERIFIN Institute found traces of two organophosphates in Gebrev's body. This may indicate that they tried to kill him with a Novichok-class nerve agent, according to The Insider and Bellingcat. Gebrev was in a coma for a month, then he got better, but after a while his condition worsened. It is assumed that they tried to poison him again. In February 2020, the Sofia prosecutor's office accused three Russian citizens in absentia of trying to kill Gebrev. Bellingcat, The Insider and Der Spiegel called them GRU agents.

According to Gebrev’s letters, cited by The Insider and Bellingcat, the Military Medical Academy in Sofia, where the entrepreneur was treated, sent samples of his blood and urine to the Finnish VERIFIN Institute in 2015, one of five laboratories in Europe accredited Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to work with biomaterials.

The laboratory found organophosphates and "some substances that could not be identified" in the samples. After the poisoning of the Skripals in 2018, a version appeared that Gebrev, like them, was poisoned by Novichok. Since February 2019, the entrepreneur has written several letters to VERIFIN with a request to provide analyzes to the Bulgarian law enforcement agencies and extend their storage period (it ended on June 18, 2020).

Gebrev received no replies to his letters. In April 2020, he asked for help from the Office of the Attorney General of Finland. They replied that they were authorized to communicate only with the "competent judicial authorities" in Bulgaria. Gebrev again sent a letter to the Prosecutor General of Finland on his own behalf, but did not receive a response. The entrepreneur believes that VERIFIN could have destroyed his test samples.

On August 25, Bulgarian law enforcement agencies suspended the investigation into Gebrev's poisoning. The Insider and Bellingcat attribute this to the lack of a response from the Finnish authorities and note that without the suspension, the time allotted for the investigation would have ended and the case would have had to be closed.

• At the end of August, Der Spiegel and Bellingcat reported that doctors at the Berlin clinic "Charite", where Alexei Navalny was taken in a coma, turned to colleagues from Bulgaria because of a possible similarity between the poisoning of a Russian politician and the assassination attempt on Emelyan Gebrev.
• On September 2, the German government officially announced that Navalny had been poisoned in Russia with a poison from the Novichok group.