“Personal commitment”: Prosecutor questioned Martin Bojanov personally

© Anti-Corruption Fund

The former Deputy District Prosecutor of Sofia, Mima Kutzkova, personally questioned Martina Bojanov – the Notary, who became known as a broker in the judicial system, who was shot at the end of January. She was the supervising prosecutor in an investigation on the complaint of a relative of Bojanov – the formal owner of the private club SS Evlogi Petrov. After Bojanov’s death, it became known that this establishment was used for meetings with magistrates and perhaps for settling cases.

It was entered only with membership cards, and there are also reports that it was guarded by employees of the Ministry of the Interior.

The murder of Bojanov, which was revealed in 2021 in the investigation of the ACF “Quick Response List”, triggered a series of institutional actions – both by the prosecutor’s office and by the parliament, but so far nothing has led to the disclosure of the whole picture of Bojanov’s influence in the judicial system.

© Velko Angelov

After his death, the entire leadership of the District Prosecutor’s Office resigned. The case, which the “Anti-Corruption Fund” is now talking about, was initiated following a complaint by Evgeni Petrov, who claims that an acquaintance of his pressured him to testify against the Notary, his lawyer Velimir Atanasov, Emil Piskov and Petyo Petrov-Evroto – the former head of the capital consequence, who has been missing for almost a year. The person against whom Petrov is complaining claimed that the mentioned four “set him up” and a case was filed against him, and then they asked him for 100,000 euros to solve his problems.

Ultimately, Petrov’s complaint led to an investigation, which brought charges against the person he complained about. The case ran for 18 months but was dropped. The reason is that one of the interrogators explains that Petrov regularly used drugs, as a result of which he claimed crazy things. A psychiatric and psychological examination found that Petrov had “experiences of a paranoid circle”. That is why prosecutor Kutzkova considers that Petrov is not fit to “correctly perceive and reproduce facts from reality” and terminates the investigation.

During the hearing of the former leadership of the district prosecutor’s office, Mima Kutzkova stated that she questioned Bojanov and remembered that she had called him personally in order not to delay the case. In her words, she calls him “solely and solely to summon him and question him as a witness.”

She told the SJC that she had no idea who Martin Bojanov was and that he found out from her colleague what he was up to. However, according to ACF data, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has data according to which Kutzkova communicated with Bojanov, Piskov and Atanasov immediately before opening the case on Petrov’s complaint. They also point out that when Kutzkova initiated the case, she was an ordinary magistrate. After that, she rose to the position of deputy head of the district prosecutor’s office, and she gave her explanations for the proceedings after she resigned, i.e. he is a regular prosecutor again.

“The question arises as to whether personal concerns, including considering the dubious circumstances surrounding the pre-trial proceedings, do not turn Kutzkova into a convenient witness, ready to speak against those identified as enemies of the current leadership of the prosecutor’s office,” the Anti-Corruption Fund said in a statement.