A team of British investigators is in Bulgaria looking into whether the 2015 suspected poisoning of a local arms dealer has links to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter last year in Salisbury.

“There is a British team here on the ground,” Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borisov, told the Guardian in an interview in Sofia. “They are jointly conducting an investigation with Bulgarian law enforcement authorities.”

Emilian Gebrev, who runs a Bulgarian company that produces and exports weapons, fell into a coma in April 2015, along with his son and one of his company directors. All three survived the suspected poisoning, but the case was never solved.

In October last year, after talking over the Skripal case with a friend, he approached Bulgarian prosecutors with the results of laboratory tests from 2015, which he believed showed he could have been poisoned with a nerve agent similar to novichok, the substance British authorities believe was used against Skripal and his daughter.

“From the moment that we heard the word novichok we were immediately in touch with our British partners through all legal channels,” said Borisov. He said this happened “several months ago”.

The case for a possible link between the poisonings was strengthened last week, when the investigative website Bellingcat said it had uncovered the travel records of a suspected GRU agent using the alias Sergey Fedotov, that showed he was in Bulgaria during the Gebrev poisoning and in Britain when Skripal and his daughter were attacked. In both cases, he used similar travel patterns, not showing up for his return flight and flying back using a different route. In another report published on Thursday Bellingcat said it had unmasked Fedotov’s real identity.

Using open-source research and leaked travel databases, the website has previously unmasked what it says are the real identities of two other GRU agents British authorities are seeking in relation to the Skripal poisoning.

Russia has denied all involvement in the case, with the two men appearing on Russia Today to claim they were travelling salesmen on holiday, before disappearing.

Bulgarian authorities have confirmed that “Fedotov” made three trips to Bulgaria in 2015, including during the time when Gebrev was poisoned.

“All information that we have related to the movements, the place of stay, the partnerships and the contacts that this person has had and that we know of has been provided to the British law enforcement and intelligence services,” said Borisov. He declined to comment further, citing the ongoing investigation.

On Monday, Borisov met the British ambassador in Sofia and announced the joint investigation. “We are working in a joint team and a close partnership, and we are going to find out the facts in this case,” the ambassador, Emma Hopkins, told reporters after the meeting.

She did not mention that a British team had arrived in the country, and the embassy referred all inquiries about the case to the Metropolitan police, who also refused to comment.

Borisov declined to say whether the British team included police or intelligence agents. “Let’s call it an investigative team,” he said.



Gebrev, however, said he had not been contacted by any British investigation team and had received only cursory questioning from Bulgarian prosecutors. “What British investigation team? I’m hearing it for the first time from you. Nobody else has contacted me,” he said.

The businessman said he was certain he was poisoned but cannot think of a reason why he would be targeted by Russian intelligence. A summary of the 2015 laboratory tests paid for by Gebrev suggest he was poisoned with an organophosphate, but it is not fully clear whether the dose was of a simple pesticide or of a weapons-grade agent.

Bulgaria’s chief prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, appeared to suggest earlier in the week that Gebrev’s illness could have been the result of simple food poisoning from eating a bad salad. After a parliamentary hearing on the issue on Wednesday, however, he said he had been misunderstood: “We in no way assert that he suffered food poisoning. We are investigating an attempted murder.”

Maria Georgieva contributed to this report