Kidnappers of retired businessman Vene Sotirov (64), who has been missing since April 16 2009, have asked his relatives for one million leva ransom, Bulgarian news agency BTA said on April 22 2009.

BTA quoted its own sources familiar with the police investigation, while Sotirov's family declined to comment.

Police says that Sotirov has been kidnapped with witnesses claiming that he was "detained" by a group of men wearing police uniforms while he was about to enter a residential building in Sofia's Souhata Reka borough. The abduction happened in the afternoon, in front of a number of witnesses.

Following th abduction, Sotirov's daughter sent an open letter to kidnappers, saying that her father was not a businessman and he did not have what to offer in terms of a ransom. He had retired from active work as head of a cooperative company that owns a chain of stores in Sofia and is involved with catering. His daughter said that his monthly salary was 1740 leva and he was driving a company car.

"You've got a sick man on your hands who has nothing," she said in the latter, asking the kidnappers to "at least buy him the medications he needs because he would not survive the stress".

Media reports, however, said that Sotirov was a former member of the supervisory board of the First Eastern International Bank, now the International Asset Bank, alongside the president of Slavia Sofia football club Ventsislav Stefanov and former MP Dimitar Lambovski, among others.

Until 1996, he was in the executive board of the Central Cooperative Bank.

Media speculated that Sotirov had been kidnapped by the same group who held businessman Kiro Kirov as hostage for 17 days. He was released on April 14 2009 after his son, Ivan Kirov, paid 620 000 euro in ransom, according to reports. On April 21 2009, he told private television channel bTV that this was not the amount of money he left in bag on the Trakiya highway. He only said that "it was a large sum of money".