Following the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, Bulgaria was plunged into economic crisis. 
As the country tried to rebuild in the new global dispensation, many Bulgarians emigrated in search of greener pastures — and some chose the  freshly free South Africa. Among them was a group of  criminals who would come to be known as the Bulgarian mafia. 
Members of this shadowy enterprise brought the first credit card cloning devices to South Africa in the late 1990s. Initially, the Bulgarian mafia specialised in bank card cloning, bringing  misery to countless victims in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent. 
The money was rolling in, and the Bulgarian crime bosses branched out into strip clubs and human trafficking. But no illicit trade pays better than drugs. And no drug pays better than cocaine. It’s the perfect product and it sells itself.
Arena Holdings journalists first became aware of the Bulgarian mafia in 2018 when two alleged members, a couple from Bergvliet in Cape Town’s southern suburbs, were assassinated in their home in a hit that involved drugs and diamonds.
But the shocking extent of the mafia’s operations in South Africa was only revealed in March last year, when four Bulgarian men were arrested in Saldanha Bay with a ship full of cocaine.
Among them was Asen Ivanov, a kingpin in the group’s cocaine racket.