Forgiveness: Boyko Boirissov and Kiril Petkov dropped lawsuits against each other

Even though Forgiveness Day in Bulgaria is months away (March 17 this year), the mutual forgiveness in the political arena apparently started 90 days earlier.

GERB leader Boyko Borissov and “We Continue the Change” co-leader Kiril Petkov have dropped lawsuits against each other. The two had been suing each other for statements made before the early parliamentary elections in 2023 after which GERB-UDF and “We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria” formed an informal government coalition.

Borissov was suing Petkov for saying: "Borisov knows very well that in a working judicial system he would have to go to prison" and "And for the eight thousand BGN that the Bulgarian Development Bank paid per month to this law firm for a total of two months, they made such news that we forgot that we were talking about three billion, up to four billion per year that Borissov was stealing and how we tried to actually stop him altogether was left out", said on 10 August 2022, on the air of one of the private national TV channels.

According to the minutes of Sofia City Court, on 18 December 2023, Borissov withdrew his claim against Kiril Petkov and the court dropped the case in which Borissov was seeking 26,000 BGN from Petkov for non-pecuniary damages.

In turn, almost a month later, Petkov forgave Borissov. Yesterday (15 January), the Sofia District Court has terminated the criminal case of a private nature that Kiril Petkov filed against Boyko Borissov. Petkov was suing Borissov because at a briefing on 24 August 2022, the leader of GERB accused the "Petkov cabinet" of supplying natural gas to the country through a subsidiary of Gazprom, in order to benefit companies close to "We Continue the Change".

When the Petkov v/ Borissov case was launched, the court accepted, as part of the trial, which is for defamation, to consider a partial civil claim against Borissov for 10,000 BGN in compensation out of the 500,000 BGN requested when the case was filed. The reason why the court yesterday terminated the case is: "an explicit request for withdrawal of the complaint that became the basis for the initiation of these proceedings, respectively for the withdrawal of the civil action accepted for joint consideration."

So the two former Prime Ministers and leaders of the ruling non-coalition are no longer suing each other.