A court has removed from office the chief architect of Bulgaria's second-largest city Plovdiv, as a probe relating to the demolition of an old building has found a number of irregularities.

Rumen Rusev is now accused of committing nearly 60 violations while in office.

These are connected to the design, drafting and elaboration of masterplans, and allowing and coordinating new construction, news website Dnevnik.bg reports.

The Plovdiv District Court has ruled that Rusev could try to apply pressure on witnesses who work for or with him if he remains in office.

In March, a building once used to store tobacco in Plovdiv was partly demolished at the end of a long weekend and a national holiday.

Despite being declared a cultural heritage building in 1977 and having become part of a cultural heritage area in 2000, a vast section of the building was demolished on Sunday, the end of a long weekend following the national holiday on March 03.

After an update to the cultural heritage registry, a mistake resulted in its exclusion from the list, but the building had been part of a protected group of monuments for fifteen years.

It later emerged the private owner of the building had sent the municipality a fake document to prove the building was not within any protected area.

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