Send to Kindle
Controversial Bulgarian businessman Mario Nikolov. Photo by BGNES
Bulgarian businessman Mario Nikolov and the other defendants in the country's highly publicized SAPARD money laundering case were acquitted on all charges by a Bulgarian court on Friday.
On Wednesday, Prosecutors requested guilty verdicts for Nikolov, his wife Mariana, Lyudmil Stoykov, Ana Sharkova, Valentin Angelov, Lazarina Georgieva and Ivan Ivanov. They were charged with participating in an organized crime group engaged in laundering EUR 7.5 M drained from the EU agriculture program SAPARD.
However, the Sofia Court of Appeals has found them not guilty.
On March 29 2010, the Sofia City Court sentenced Nikolov to 10 years behind bars and his wife, Mariana, to 8 years in the notorious SAPARD case. The two were charged, along with Lyudmil Stoykov, with laundering the money drained from SAPARD. Stoykov was acquitted by the Court.
In June 2010 Bulgaria's Sofia City Court sentenced Nikolov to 12 years in prison, and five other accomplices to smaller sentences for draining EUR 7.5 M of SAPARD funds.
However, upon the appeal of the sentence, the Sofia Court of Appeals determined that there are a number of procedural breaches and unclarified facts in the proceedings.
The Russian Embassy in Sofia has issued a warning that an increasing number of Russian citizens in Bulgaria are falling victim to property-related fraud
A large-scale cryptocurrency fraud scheme worth over 100 million euros has been dismantled following an international operation coordinated by the European Judicial Cooperation Office
BORICA has officially become the first and only Bulgarian provider registered in the public register of the European Payments Council (EPC), following the completion of registration and technical compliance procedures
A criminal scheme linked to an international money laundering network has been uncovered in Bulgaria
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Munich has led an operation resulting in the arrest of three individuals on April 1 as part of an ongoing investigation into a €50 million VAT fraud scheme
Dutch experts from the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are in Sofia for a series of capacity-building trainings with their Bulgarian colleagues from the General Directorate Border Police in identification of forged documents.
Bulgarian brokerage firms have been implicated in an international investigation into a Russian money-laundering scheme. According to Intelligence Online
The Sofia Directorate of Internal Affairs has reported a new and particularly dangerous method of drug distribution aimed at children
The Sofia District Prosecutor’s Office has concluded that the dog named Maya, who was run over in Sofia’s Razsadnika neighborhood
The doctor involved in the fatal incident with the stray dog Maya has left Bulgaria
The Military Medical Academy (VMA) in Sofia has suspended North Macedonian citizen Dr. Nenad Tsonevski, who was involved in the case of a dog being run over in the capital’s Rassadnika district
The North Macedonian doctor from Sofia’s Military Medical Academy who ran over the stray dog Maya in the capital’s "Razsadnika" district has left the apartment he was renting
Bulgaria's Strategic Role in the EU's Drone Wall Defense Initiative
When Politics Means Violence
