The former director of the Customs, Petya Bankova, told the investigators that the personnel changes she undertook while leading the agency were on the instructions of the former finance minister Asen Vassilev.
Her testimony was cited during the session of the Sofia Court of Appeal, before which another of the defendants in the Customs affair - Stefan Dimitrov, appealed his 7-month detention in custody. The court did not accept his request, BNR reported.
Bankova gave her explanation days before the Sofia City Court - with the consent of the prosecutor's office, she was released from custody. In addition to her deteriorating health, an argument for the decision was that she assists the investigators and provides information about the other participants in the criminal group.
Part of it, according to the prosecutor's office, is the father of Stefan Dimitrov-Marin, who is also in custody, the former chief secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Zhivko Kotsev, as well as Nikola Nikolov-Paskal, who is in extradition proceedings.
Stefan Dimitrov's lawyer - Ivo Naydenov, quotes what Bankova said about Asen Vasilev, as an argument that it was not his client who framed the Customs, which is one of his accusations.
However, the court referred to another part of the testimony, in which Dimitrov is described as a person with a wide network of contacts with officials in high positions in the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance.
To the words of lawyer Naydenov that the main purpose of the investigation is to reach Asen Vasilev and the former Minister of Internal Affairs Boyko Rashkov, the appellate judges replied that they have no right to comment on allegations of a political nuance, but that no representative of a political party is not immune from prosecution if evidence exists.
Ultimately, the SAC found no reason to change Stefan Dimitrov's pretrial detention order, the prosecutor's order to grant his request for a medical examination in a selected medical institution, and reminded that there is a little more than a month left until the end of the maximum term for his detention .