Following a decision of the Supreme Court of Cassation, Mariana Ivanova resumed her position as director of 164th Zornitsa Kindergarten
The Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) ruled to reinstate Mariana Ivanova, director of the 164th Zornitsa Kindergarten in Sofia’s Gorna Banya district. She will return immediately to the post from which she was dismissed at the end of 2017 on charges of excessive admission of children with chronic diseases, which the case did not prove. Sofia municipality will bear the litigation costs, the salaries, and the insurances of Ivanova for the period of dismissal.
At a press conference on Monday, Mariana Ivanova and her two lawyers, Kristian Gyoshev and Vladislav Yanev, presented extensive information on the scandalous case.
Attorney Gyoshev explained that the Supreme Court of Cassation overturned the order as formally illegal. During the case, Ms. Ivanova’s defendants requested information from the Deputy Mayor of Sofia Municipality, Todor Chobanov, regarding the admission of children to other kindergartens in the city. In a letter to attorney Gyoshev, the Deputy mayor listed 14 kindergartens in which, in the 2017/2018 school year, there were children with chronic diseases admitted above the plan. After the Sofia Appellation Court’s decision obliging him to provide more specific information, Mr. Chobanov transferred the obligation for information to the kindergartens in the list. According to the information from the kindergartens, 164th “Zornitsa” Kindergarten was only seventh (with six children) and eighth (with eight children) among the Sofia kindergartens, which admitted an additional number of children in the school years 2016/2017 and 2017/2018. Heading the lists were kindergartens with 34, 23, and 17 children admitted in the 2016/2017 school year and 48, 29, and 21 children in the next year.
At the press conference, attorney Yanev explained that Ovcha Kupel district’s former mayor, Ms. Semerdzhieva, and Sofia Municipality Education Department’s director, Ms. Mincheva, filed two cases for insult and defamation against his client. The two cases were a response to Ivanova’s publication of information and evidence of Ms. Semerdzhieva and Ms. Mincheva’s interference in her work aiming to secure an admission of children in the kindergarten outside the established legal procedure. Attorney Yanev did not disclose more information, as the cases were ongoing.
Concerning the outcome of the Ivanova case, the Anti-Corruption Fund would like to remind about its January 2018 report to the Prosecutor’s office detailing suspicions of criminal offenses of high-level public officers within Sofia Municipality. Then, ACF called for an investigation to dispel the doubts that the medical documentation provided at the admission of children constituted a false document justifying an additional number of children in the kindergartens. The report also called for an investigation of whether there was an abuse of office committed during the additional admission in the other kindergartens of Sofia Municipality, e.g., pressuring the kindergartens’ directors.
As the ACF has already announced, in July 2018, the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office refused to initiate criminal proceedings and terminated the case.
The reasons for the Court’s refusal, as well as a summary of the case, can be recalled here.