site.btaUPDATED Bulgarian Development Bank Loan Probe: One Arrested, Former Bank Chief and Borrower Company Owner to Be Charged

The Sofia City Prosecution Service has gathered evidence to charge three individuals in a case for a non-performing loan of some BGN 150 million from the Bulgarian Development Bank (BDB), deputy city prosecutors Desislava Petrova and Deyan Zahariev told a news briefing Thursday.

The three individuals are former BDB director Stoyan Mavrodiev, Rumen Gaytanski, the owner of borrower company Roadway Construction, and a representative of the same company.

Prosecutor Zaharieva said there is no proof that Mavrodiev and Gaytanski have left the country as is widely reported by the news media. The two men are now wanted.

The Roadway Construction representative has been detained for 24 hours.

This comes a day after the Commission for Anti-Corruption (CAC) and the Prosecution Service announced that they conducted searches in the BDB loan investigation. 

Prosecutor Deyan Zahariev said that there is enough evidence to charge Stoyan Mavrodiev for major official embezzlement. If found guilty, he faces a prison sentence of 10 to 20 years and confiscation of part or all of his assets.

Gaytanski and the Roadway Construction representative, Ivan Georgiev, will be be charged as accomplices, one as aide and the other as instigator.

Prosecutors are yet to decide if other BDB officials should be held accountable. 

Zahariev said that money laundering charges may be pressed at a later stage.

He explained that the charges have not yet been pressed because the Mavrodiev and Gaytanski are still wanted and it is yet to be established if they are in Bulgaria or abroad. Only then will the prosecutor decide whether to charge them in absentia.

The investigation into the BDB loan of 2019 was launched in late October 2022 following a tip-off. It was for a malfeasance in office and was assigned to the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (DGCOC) and then to an investigator from the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office. By a decree of May 5, 2023, the proceedings were discontinued as the supervising prosecutor considered that there was no evidence of a malfeasance in office. The Appellate Prosecutor's Office upheld the termination, but the Supreme Cassation Prosecutor's Office found flaws in the investigation as some of the links between the companies that were connected to the loan had not been properly examined. The case was therefore referred back to the prosecution service on January 12, 2024 for further investigation, with instructions to question witnesses and request documentation. Following subsequent legislative changes, the pre-trial proceedings were assigned to the Anti-Corruption Commission. During the searches and seizures, documents and other evidence were seized.

There is no evidence that Rumen Gaytanski and Stoyan Mavrodiev have been questioned as witnesses in the investigation, Prosecutor Desislava Petrova explained.

She urged politicians not to interfere in the work of the state prosecution. "The prosecution service does not time its work to match politicians' agenda. Pressure on the judiciary, including through insinuations, to make it bow down to political aspirations is political interference in our work. We should be left to do our job," Desislava Petrova said.