The Sofia City Prosecutor's Office has indicted German Kostin, a Russian national, on charges of the murder of a minor.

Kostin, who has a permanent residence permit for Bulgaria but lives in northern Cyprus, allegedly murdered 5-year-old Nikita Plotnikov, a boy whose body was found by accident in a suitcase in March of last year. There are no charges related to the death of Nikita's mother, Anna Leontieva, whose body was found several weeks earlier.

Charges had been pressed against Kostin in May 2015, but no indictment had been submitted until Monday.

The defendant, a reserve soldier, also received GBP 501 938 in four tranches for property deals with the boy's father, Vadim Plotnikov.

The prosecution maintains that, after getting involved in several property deals with the family of Nikita (then based in Russia), Kostin elaborated a scam that separated the boy's father from his son, with the latter settling in Sofia with his mother half a year before the crime was allegedly committed.

Since 2012, thousands of euros were transferred to Kostin by the family which in the meantime moved from Russia to Northern Cyprus. Subsequently, as the couple was going through divorce, Anna Leontieva and her son Nikita relocated to Bulgaria's capital Sofia, after the two had spent several months by the Black Sea, where Anna found the summer weather conditions more favourable than in Northern Cyprus.

However, they moved to Sofia in the summer of 2014, where, as the prosecution alleges, her "movement, relations and personal life" were controlled by Kostin.

Early in 2015, Leontieva informed her own mother that she had a share in a construction company with Kostin in Northern Cyprus and was waiting to cash in on several real estate deals in the same country and in Sofia.

A month later, as she had been insisting to receive her share of the deals from Kostin, the latter had "decided to avail himself personally with the large sums of money earned in Northern Cyprus and Sofia. The only obstacle for the plan to be carried out was the knowledge of the mother of the child, who was aware of all the deals."

Leontieva visited Kostin in February 2015, with Kostin allegedly taking them to the Black Sea by car after offering them a brief trip.

Kostin then left for Sofia with the boy, without his mother being in the car. Leontieva's body was found in March, not far from the Black Sea town of Primorsko.

The boy himself was found near the village of Dolni Pasarel on March 20, 2015, as Kostin had already left the country en route to Northern Cyprus.