The Sofia City Court has suspended the proceedings on the early release of Evelin Banev, known as Brendo. The ruling is subject to appeal and protest, dnes.bg specified.
Today Evelin Banev participated via video link from prison. He was calmly chewing gum during the hearing. Immediately after the case was terminated, Brendo muttered something that the court did not hear, got up and left for his cell.
The proposal for early conditional release was submitted by the director of the Sofia prison, Borislav Chorbanski, for which he was temporarily suspended. A month ago, former Minister of Justice Georgi Georgiev suspended the prison warden Borislav Chorbanski after it became clear that he had requested the court to release Evelin Banev, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, without informing anyone about this.
According to the judge, the proceedings were initiated by the warden of the Sofia Prison, who was temporarily suspended, and an authorized representative of the current warden withdrew the request in the courtroom, and this is grounds for terminating the proceedings.
According to prosecutor Angel Kanev, Brendo must make a new request to the acting warden of the Central Sofia Prison, who replaced the temporarily suspended Borislav Chorbanski.
The prison warden's reasons for releasing Brendo were that he had served more than half of his sentence and had reformed. The alleged cocaine kingpin is serving a 6-year prison sentence in Bulgaria for participating in a criminal group and laundering money obtained from drug trafficking.
On June 24, 2024, Evelin Banev - Brendo surrendered to the Sofia prison. He was declared an international wanted person in 2018.
The Sofia Court of Appeals finally decided that Brendo will serve a total sentence of ten and a half years in Bulgaria under an initial strict regime. Almost one year in custody in Italy was deducted from this amount, as well as the time Banev spent in prison in Sofia.
Banev's sentence in Italy is 20 years in prison for drug trafficking and for being the leader of a criminal group. In Romania, he was sentenced to 10 years and six months. According to Bulgarian law, these crimes require a lighter sentence.