The Sofia Court of Appeal released businessman Vasil Bozhkov under house arrest. The implementation of the measure will be monitored with an electronic bracelet.

The decision is final.

Vasil Bozhkov entered the courtroom to loud applause from supporters this morning, where a three-member panel of the Sofia Court of Appeal was deciding whether to leave him in custody.

On August 26, the City Court ordered "detention in custody" for the gambling boss, who returned to Bulgaria a day earlier. The measure is related to the one case against Bozhkov related to his gambling business.

It is about the so-called gambling case - according to it, Bozhkov is accused of creating and leading an organized criminal group for extortion and bribery, money laundering, damaging the state treasury by not paying gambling fees for over half a billion leva.

However, the court did not find sufficient evidence on all these charges and therefore overturned the decision of the first-instance court, which had detained him, and imposed the second most severe remand measure - house arrest.

In addition, according to the court panel, the danger that Bozhkov will commit another crime while out of jail has also decreased.

While the court panel was announcing its decision, a case arose surrounding the prosecutor's office's sudden decision to file a request for Bozhkov's detention on a charge that was brought against him immediately after his return from Dubai, namely, for having committed criminal acts. This is the investigation into allegations that he was involved in assassination attempts, including a failed assassination attempt against Alexei Petrov.

Later it became clear that after the decision of the Sofia Court of Appeal for house arrest, the prosecutor's office withdrew its request to detain Bozhkov in custody, so he will be free within hours. But he has to deal with another problem - in his third case: for illegal actions related to the cultural and historical heritage, the Prosecutor's Office has determined a measure for Bozhkov of 1.5 million leva.

His lawyer said that he will appeal this measure, as Bozhkov cannot afford it and pay it at the moment.

This is what Georgi Gatev said in response to a question, now that Bozhkov is no longer in custody, will he be able to testify more freely in the case in which he is already testifying, namely - the one related to Boyko Borissov, Vladislav Goranov and Sevdelina Arnaudova:

"Everything depends on the investigating authorities, they can conduct new interrogations, new evidence can be collected, additional, as I told you, it is possible by procedure and in most cases it is simply mandatory if the persons agree," said lawyer Georgi Gatev.

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