Sotir Tsatsarov, Chairman of the Plovdiv Regional Court and candidate for Bulgarian Chief Prosecutor, reacted Sunday to an investigative journalistic report that a construction company has donated to him and to his wife an apartment.

The 56-square-meter apartment, donated by the construction company Kalisto Mati, is located in a newly-constructed building in downtown Plovdiv, the site for investigative journalism Bivol.bg wrote, citing documents found with the Plovdiv Registry Agency. The entry includes declared material interest in the amount of BGN 41 307.13.

Speaking Sunday for the Bulgarian National Radio, BNR, Tsatsarov stated that his property status has been blown out of proportion to the extend it had turned into slander.

Regarding the apartment in question, he admitted that there had been such real estate deal between his family and the said large construction company and that the number and the volume of the listed notary deed matched along with the date of the transaction and the description of the property, but denied firmly this has been a donation. The Chief Prosecutor candidate further explained that the apartment had been purchased by the couple and had a real listed price.

Tsatsarov declared he has documents proving the above statement and pledged to make these documents publically available Sunday afternoon.

When asked by the host about what he thought prompted such damming publications, he offered the following quote-on-quote:

"I now expect to be accused of somehow gaining access to the Registry Agency in the middle of the night and of forging the notary deed for a donation to make it a notary deed for an apartment sale. No, I have not been unexplainably generous, and no, I did not trade influence. On the contrary – we purchased an apartment. But this presentation of a notary deed for an apartment sale as a notary deed for a donation with identical data is not accidental. And this would not be the last one. It is the one before last."

The judge reiterated that he believed "someone was staging something similar to a smear campaign against him," adding at first, when the publication exposing his wife of tax evasion was released, he became outraged, but currently had begun to get accustomed to such reports.

From all his explanations, however, it remained unclear why the original document obtained by Bivol from the archives of the Registry Agency lists the apartment in Plovdiv is a donation.

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