Sofia City Court sentenced Veska Medzhidieva, former governor of liquidated Bulgarian agrarian and industrial bank, to seven years in prison on Friday.
Medzhidieva, who now lives in South Africa, was found guilty of draining BGN 1,75 M from the bank accounts of her bank's clients between October 1994 and May 1995. The Bulgarian agrarian and industrial bank was liquidated in July 1995.
Her name was linked to the Orion financial circle, in which the former Prime Minister Zhan Videnov was involved.
The sentence may be appealed within five days.
Medzhidieva and her husband Rumen Spasov fled to South Africa just months before the fall of the Videnov cabinet. Despite request for their extradition to Bulgaria, the S African authorities refused to let them go back, because they have the statute of a large-scale investor in the country.
The politics of Videnov's cabinet are majorly responsible for the severe economic crisis Bulgaria went through between 1995 and 1996. During that period, the standard of living fell drastically and the leaders of notorious crime groups like "777", "VIS - 2", "SIC" and "Multigroup" practically reigned the country. The crisis escalated in the winter of 1996 when food and energy supplies decreased and this resulted in a series of nation-wide riots and strikes, and eventually brought the fall of Videnov's cabinet in February 1997. Hyperinflation was also observed when the rate of the Bulgarian lev went down from BGN 60 for USD 1 to BGN 3000 for USD 1.