“The Eight Dwarfs,” part 4: And the Prosecutor General’s signature

The fourth and final part of the Anti-Corruption Fund’s (ACF) investigation continues to trace the story of the conflict in the “Izamet” elevator factories after a meeting at “The Eight Dwarfs” restaurant a year ago. A careful look at the court files in the “Izamet” case presents one more surprise – a record of a session of the Specialized Criminal Court (SpCC) signed by the Prosecutor General at the time, Sotir Tsatsarov.

The document reveals that the very next day after the businessman Iliya Zlatanov met with the former head of the Investigation Department of the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office Petyo Petrov “The Euro” on 27 June 2019, the Prosecutor General ordered an investigation by the National Investigation Department into the existing files about all of Zlatanov’s previous complains. Why is this document important?

During the three previous years, there had been no substantial progress on the three case files in question. During this time, Zlatanov was kicked out of his factories with a private bailiff by his son with whom he had a longstanding conflict. This led to the meeting and request for “informal assistance” with the former head of the Investigation Department of the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office Petyo Petrov, “The Euro.” In Zlatanov’s own words, the assistance came, as if on “a magic carpet:” two weeks after the meeting, his opponents in the legal dispute were detained on charges of racket and extortion. Days before the arrests, however, Zlatanov signed a promissory note worth nearly 3 million BGN in favor of Petyo Petrov’s wife – Lyubena Petrova.

Such personal involvement of the Prosecutor General in ongoing proceedings is exceptionally rare and, in a scandalous case like that, very suspicious. ACF, therefore, sent the following questions to the Prosecutor’s Office press department:

“According to a record of a session of the Specialized Criminal Court of 19/20 July 2019, section 3, under Criminal Civil Case 2545 of the Specialized Criminal Court of 2019, on 28 June 2019, the Prosecutor General ordered that the National Investigation Department investigated evidence joined into three files of the Sofia City Court regarding an offense under Article 255 of the Criminal Code. This record raises the following questions:

– What were the grounds for this order?

– Did the Prosecutor General personally examine the said files? If not, who recommended the order?

–Can we receive a copy of the order?”

“We received no answer form the Prosecutor’s Office. It only reinforced our doubts about whether and how it acts on command in similar cases. And how this happens precisely when scandalously notorious former magistrates are involved,” said the author of the investigation Nikolay Staykov. It is also important to recall that upon his leaving the Prosecutor’s Office back in 2015, there was a request for disciplinary proceedings against Petrov which was rejected in the Supreme Judicial Council. At the same time, Petrov’s future wife, Lyubena, organized “counter-protests” in support of the same Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov.

The fourth and final part also contains many essential and hitherto unknown details about the conflict in the elevator factories in Sofia and Dupnitsa and the “Delta Guard” security company’s activity. Currently, all assets and accounts belonging to the companies are distrained by Lyubena Petrova under the unpaid promissory note. The video also shows bank documents of a company, sole property of Lyubena Petrova, making payments for the salaries of the workers at the “Izamet” factory in Dupnitsa, guarded by “Delta Guard.” As in the previous three parts, the Prosecutor’s Office did not provide any comment whatsoever.

“An in-depth and objective inquiry into “The Eight Dwarfs” case is crucial at this moment of critically low trust in the work of the Prosecutor’s Office. It is also a test for the professionalism, independence, and integrity of the system as a whole”, said the Anti-Corruption Fund’s director Boyko Stankushev. “Our organization will continue to offer full support to all relevant institutions. We will submit to the Prosecutor’s Office a complete legal analysis of the information, allegations, and documents presented in this series.”

The information revealed in “The Eight Dwarfs” series is the subject of an ongoing preliminary investigation at the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office. More than ten witnesses in this story chose not to stand before the camera. Two refused to disclose their whereabouts.