Former disaster management deputy minister Delyan Peevski, one of the key figures in the corruption scandal that shook Bulgaria earlier this year, was reinstated as an investigator in the Sofia investigative service on Thursday.

The country's Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), which turned down his reinstatement in May, voted in favour of his appeal.

Peevski, 27, was dismissed in the middle of May as deputy minister of disaster management amidst the large-scale corruption scandal that led also to the suspension of economy minister Rumen Ovcharov.

He was appointed deputy minister on the quota of the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, reaching the peak of one of the most dashing careers on the local political scene.

But he was sacked when the head of Bulgaria's state-owned tobacco monopoly Bulgartabac, Hristo Lachev, accused him of attempting to influence managerial appointments within the company.

Lachev had also accused Peevski of extorting funds from the company, amounting up to BGN 150,000 a month, for "private purposes".

Peevski has been charged with malfeasance in office, but the trial against him was suspended in September.

The scandal, which spelled the end of Ovcharov's and Peevski's tenures with the current cabinet, also took the head of Peevski's former superior, the head of the investigative service Anguel Alexandrov, who was accused of allegedly lobbying for deals with the State Reserve, which was headed by Peevski.

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