Court closes high-profile SAPARD fraud case due to expiration of prescriptive period

After 13 years, the Appellate Specialized Criminal Court has closed the high-profile case for the money laundering connected to the siphoning off of 7,5 million Euro from the EU’s pre-accession aid SAPARD programme because the prescriptive period expired, BNR reported on March 1.

The court discontinued the criminal proceedings against Mario Nikolov – the last defendant who was charged with leading a crime group for draining SAPARD programme.

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The lawsuits against Mario Nikolov and six other defendants is part of the so called ‘SAPARD Affair’ for siphoning off almost 7,5 million euro from SAPARD programme (Special Pre-Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development to help countries from Central and Eastern Europe to deal with problems in the agricultural and rural sector), as a result of which the Prosecutor’s Office initiated two parallel investigations: for embezzlement of funds and for money-laundering. Both investigations have been closely monitored by the European Commission and EU anti-fraud office OLAF.

The defendants were accused of using false documents on numerous occasions to export used meat processing and packing equipment from Bulgaria to Germany, where the equipment was dismantled and then imported back to Bulgaria, presenting it as brand new. SAPARD funds were used to purchase the “brand new” equipment.

On the lawsuit for embezzlement by using forged documents, the first instance court sentenced Mario Nikolov to 12 years of imprisonment, his wife Mariana Nikolova was jailed for 5 years, four other guilty defendants were sentenced to imprisonment and two were acquitted.

At a later stage however Sofia Court of Appeal overturned all these sentences and returned the case back to pre-trial proceedings because significant procedural mistakes were made in the indictment and it was full of contradictions, unclear points and ambiguous conclusions.

Another defendant, Lyudmil Stoikov was charged by the prosecution with organizing a criminal group, managed by Mario Nikolov, for money laundering of over 12.8 million BGN, misappropriated from SAPARD programme. He however was acquitted on all charges at the first instance court, but the other defendants, Mario Nikolov, his wife Mariana, Ana Sharkova, Ivan Ivanov and Valentin Angelov received effective sentences.

It took more than two years for the case to reach the second instance court, Sofia Court of Appeal, where all the defendants were acquitted.

A big scandal followed after the prosecutor Stoycho Nenkov withdrew his protests against the acquittals of Mario Nikolov and Ludmil Stoykov and was accused in obstruction of justice.

Simultaneously two German citizens were sentenced by a German court for participating in the fraudulent scheme, but it transpired that the Bulgarian investigators did not effectively use the evidence gathered by their German counterparts.