/ world today news/ The Sofia Court of Appeal (SAC) will hear for the second time the case against the former interior minister and current chairman of the PG of GERB Tsvetan Tsvetanov for the refused SRS, in which two instances sentenced him to 4 years in prison.
The case is being heard again by the SAC after the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) sent it back for a new examination by another panel. Before that, both the City Court and a panel of the SAS found him guilty of dereliction of duty. It is expected that the defense of Tsvetan Tsvetanov will insist on the questioning of the former Chief Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Kalin Georgiev.
There were three cases against Tsvetan Tsvetanov that reached the court. He was acquitted on two of them. A decision of the Supreme Court is expected in the case against him for embezzlement of 50,000. BGN in favor of the former director of RZBOP-Veliko Tarnovo Orlin Todorov. The third case against Tsvetanov never even made it to the second instance – it is related to mobile phone tapping. According to him, the prosecutor’s office refused to maintain the accusations it raised in the case and the court acquitted him. In this process, the former Minister of the Interior was charged with the three former directors of SDOTO, after on February 3, 2014 The Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office submitted an indictment to the SGS against him and against the former directors of SDOTO – Sergey Katsarov, Kamen Kostov and Tsvetan Ivanov. All three were also acquitted.
BGNES recalls that on June 19, the Supreme Court canceled Tsvetanov’s 4-year conviction from February of this year at the SAS and returned the case for a new consideration by another panel of the court from the stage of the court session. In February 2015, the SAS found Tsvetan Tsvetanov guilty of a charge of dereliction of duty with the aim of thwarting a criminal prosecution against three persons and was sentenced to 4 years of “imprisonment” under an initial “general” regime, as well as a ban on occupying position in the state administration for a period of 5 years.
The Supreme Court upheld Tsvetanov’s appeal against the decision confirming the conviction of the Sofia City Court. The supreme judges accept that the defendant’s right to receive justice from an impartial court, guaranteed by the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and the Criminal Procedure Code, has been violated. The decision was signed with the dissenting opinion of judge Zhanina Nacheva.
In his separate opinion, Judge Nacheva states: “I cannot agree with any of the arguments on which the majority is based in order to accept as legitimate and objectively justified the defendant’s doubts about the impartiality of the appellate court. “I also find unacceptable the arguments, that the Sofia Court of Appeal failed to distance itself from various suggestions; that he himself made suggestions through the means of expression used in the reasons for the decision; that he made direct accusations and this suggested that he felt personally affected by the defendant’s public statements as a politician about the investigations,” she says.
#Tsvetanov #court
