After a publication of BIRD, the prosecutor’s office charged quietly a man considered as a protégé of former MOI Minister

It took almost 3 years for the state prosecution to accuse and bring to justice the former employee of the 4th Regional Directorate of the Sofia Directorate of the Interior Antoni Apostolov, illuminated in an article of BRRD. He twice accepted a bribe with marked money while an investigation was underway against him and other employees of the 4th Precinct for racketeering businessmen under his area with a “peace fee”. The BRRD revealed that instead of being charged, he became the main witness of the state prosecution against his colleagues. In a post from May last year The team gave an explanation of this mystery – Apostolov’s family is very close to former Interior Minister Mladen Marinov. After our publication followed the indictment of Antoni Apostolov.

On February 10, the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office announcedAn indictment was filed with the Specialized Criminal Court against six police officers accused of participating in an organized criminal group for soliciting and receiving bribes. Club Z notes that we are talking about the organized crime group composed of employees of the 4th Precinct in the capital, which was detained on January 23, 2019. Then the arrest of the group deserved a special briefing of Ivan Geshev, in his capacity as Deputy Prime Minister. The Chief Prosecutor announced that among the detainees are Krasimir Krastev – Head of the Economic Police in the district, Mario Drinzolov, Radoslav Tomov and Georgi Naydenov.

In the publications on the occasion of the indictment now it is mentioned that 6 people have been charged and now as defendants. One of them is an employee of the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime. The simple arithmetic shows that 5 people are known to the general public – Krasimir Krastev, Mario Drinzolov, Radoslav Tomov and Georgi Naydenov and some employee of the General Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime (GDBOP). The Prosecutor’s Office modestly conceals that they have also indicted the alleged protégé of Mladen Marinov policeman Antoni Apostolov.

Very curious is the role of Krasimir Krastev, head of the economic police at the 4th Precinct, who is alleged to be the head of the OCG by the Prosecutor’s Office. Before the operation, Krastev was pressured to move to another police station or wherever, probably because the area was appetizing due to the concentration of serious business. Krastev initially did not succumb to the pressure and there were 5 disciplinary proceedings against him by the Sofia Directorate of Interior, initiated by an order of Mladen Marinov as director of the directorate. Up to one, all five proceedings ended with the imposition of penalties on Krastev. All five punishments were knocked down by the lawyers of the officer in court. While fighting Marinov & CO, Krastev received paresis on his face. From October 2018 to 18. January 2019, it is outside the district and work cases. First he lies in the Ministry of Interior hospital, then recovers in a home hospital. All incriminated acts of Antoni Apostolov and Radoslav Tomov were carried out in this period. Many of them are documented through the operation of SSDs.

On January 21, 2019, Krastev returned to work. Learning about Apostolov’s unregulated actions and the purchase of a luxury car, for which the employee could not have money, the head of the economic police called Georgi Hadzhiev, director of the Sofia Directorate of the Interior at that time. He wants a meeting on the occasion of Apostolov. Hajiyev sets him up for the 23rd. A day after returning from a hospital, on January 22, 2019, Krastev applied to leave the Ministry of Interior because he was in poor health and felt repressed by the leadership of the Ministry of Interior in the face of Mladen Marinov. To the point of inability to work. On 23 a.m., instead of meeting Hajiyev, he was arrested.

In the period October – January, while Krastev was in hospital, Apostolov took these two bribes with marked banknotes in a case with supervising prosecutors Hristina Hristova and Angel Kanev. As we have already noted, no one detained Apostolov. Even in a previous publication it became clear that the supervising prosecutors and Interior Minister Mladen Marinov were able to stop his detention at this moment.

Sources of bird.bg claim that Apostolov reported directly to Marinov, for whom there is evidence that he possessed him. Apostolov was charged at the end of July 2021 after the publication of the bird.bg and after a subsequent signal in connection with the article against the employee of the Internal Security Directorate of the Ministry of Interior Yani Petkov Yankov and a prosecutor from the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office. The signal was prepared by Atanas Chernogorski, who is Krastev’s lawyer and is addressed to Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov and Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev.

For his part, Geshev, instead of sending the signal to the Inspector of the Supreme Cassation Prosecutor’s Office or the Inspectorate of the SJC, sends it to the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office, where Angel Kanev is already Deputy Administrative Head. So a regular prosecutor has to check his boss. Logically, the prosecutor Ventsislav Ferdinadov did not find evidence of abuse of office (Article 282) committed by Kanev or Hristova and terminated the file on Montenegrinski’s signal. According to Ferdinadov, they had not detained Apostolov “by inner conviction.” In this case, Kanev and Hristova have lost the material evidence – the marked money, for which they should be responsible, because they had the inner conviction that they should not realize Mladen Marinov’s protégé. On the contrary, they did not implement it in order not to disturb the activities of the group and not to frighten the other members of the group. This is at least according to Ferdinandov, who pronounced only on September 9, 2021 – a month after Apostolov was indicted and 4 months after the signal was filed.

The case has been in the trial phase since early February. The first hearing of the trial of the detained employees of the 4th Precinct was held on February 3, 2022. At least a month earlier, prosecutors had filed charges against the six police officers in court. However, on February 10, 2022, the prosecutor’s office announced on its website that it had filed the charge against the 6 teams. It had actually been submitted at least 2 months earlier. Probably, the reason for this behavior of the Prosecutor’s Office is rooted in the fact that on February 9 this year the Sofia City Council revoked by decision 711/09.02.2022 the dismissal of Krasimir Krastev by the Ministry of Interior. A day later, spec. The prosecutor’s office boasted through its website.

Strained in this case is the behavior of prosecutor Angel Kanev. He was admitted as a witness for questioning, but did not appear three times, although he was regularly summoned. The court did not grant the request of Krastev’s defense that the prosecutor be brought forcibly. In the end, Kanev was simply deleted as a witness and was fined only BGN 200. for the non-appearance.

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Разследващата журналистика е разузнаването на гражданите. BIRD се финансира от дарения. Ние не публикуваме реклами. Не получаваме държавни субсидии. Не разчитаме на грантове. Финансирането чрез малки дарения от читатели е гаранция за нашата независимост. Включете се, за да продължим да разкриваме злоупотреби и да държим отговорни властимащите. Използваме Вашите пари за хонорари на журналистите, командировки, изграждане и поддръжка на нашите информационни системи, такси за фирмени и имотни регистри у нас и по света, придобиване на техника и специално оборудване, осигуряване на нашата безопасност и други важни работни мисии. Важно: Ако дарявате всеки месец това ще ни даде възможност да планираме и организираме нашата работа. Благодарим Ви! Нас ни има, защото Вас Ви има!

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