The Sofia City Court decided on Friday to leave the notorious businessman from the town of Dupnitsa Plamen Galev under permanent arrest. Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)
The Sofia City Court decided on Friday to leave the notorious businessman from the town of Dupnitsa Plamen Galev under permanent arrest.
Galev's associate and accountant Krasimir Okov and his body guard Georgi Gradevski AKA Konana are also going to remain under permanent detention, according to the City Court Decision, confirming the December 6 decision of Sofia District Court.
According to the Prosecutor, Galev and Okov have been blackmailing Lidya Pavlova, a reporter for the local "Struma" newspaper, who had filed a lawsuit against Gradevski for severely beating her son and another young man in a discotheque in Dupnitsa. Galev and his accountant, allegedly, pressured Pavlova to withdraw the complaint by threatening her that they would discredit her son as a drug addict.
The Friday Court session was held behind closed doors.
Galev's attorney stated that they would not appeal the measure because his client did not want to involve the other defendants in a scandal.
The attorney was adamant that the accusations against his client were deprived of any logic. Galev himself stated after the trial that he was a victim of a unprecedented act of injustice.
Plamen Galev and Angel Hristov AKA the Galev Brothers became publicly known after it was leaked to the media that the former Interior Minister Rumen Petkov had met with them while they were under investigation for organized crime activities.
The information spurred a scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of Petkov as Interior Minister.