Europol announced that the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office of Cassation of Bulgaria led an operation against six illegal IP-video distributors in that country. The operation was executed by the Cybercrime Unit of the Bulgarian General Directorate Combating Organized Crime, of the Ministry of Interior.
Authorities searched multiple sites, seizing documents and digital content. One of the pirate operators was fined, and pre-trial proceedings were opened against all six.
Read the entire Europol news release
This instance again shows that anti-piracy is a collaborative effort between multiple law enforcement and legal agencies at a country level and across the EU. EUIPO’s report, Intellectual Property Crime Threat Assessment 2019, cited the shutdown of a major pirate streaming operation in Bulgaria that was coordinated between EUIPO, police organizations from bulgaria, Cyprus and Greece, the Dutch Anti-Fraud Police, Europol and members of the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), an industry organization.
In this current case, Europol’s Intellectual Property Crime Coordination Coalition (IPC3) posted two experts to Bulgaria. That deployment was co-funded with the European Union Intellectual Property Office.
