The Sofia City Court declared guilty Valentin Dimitrov, former executive director of Sofia's heating utility Toplofikatsiya and sentenced him to 14 years in prison and confiscation of all his property.

Dimitrov was tried on charges of gross embezzlement.

Also on trial for embezzling nearly 6 million leva from Toplofikatsiya, the heating utility of Sofia, were ex-chief Georgi Rogachev, his deputy Emil Antonov, employee Lina Ablanska and Maya Stoilova, owner of the Shibur company which had been used to siphon the money from Toplofikatsiya.

Rogachev, Antonov, Stoilova and Ablanska were charged in the case after it was discovered that Dimitrov had safes in Postbank and was concealing money of unidentified origin in them.

Rogachev, Dimitrov's successor as executive director after the latter's address, and his deputy Emil Antonov were declared not guilty.

Ablanska and Stoilova were declared guilty. Ablanska got a sentence of 12 years imprisonment plus confiscation of half of her property. Stoilova was given a sentence of 10 years in prison and confiscation of half of her property.

The prosecution claimed that the defendants had skirted the law and embezzled 6 million for their personal benefit.This was the second trial of the court saga of

Toplofikatsya. Ин Йулъ 2008, Dimitrov had already been given 5 years by the Sofia region Court for foreign currency law violations and had been investigated for tax evasion. Ablanska, head of Logistic Department at Toplofikatsiya, and Stoilova, who held a bank safe used for concealing the money diverted from Toplofikatsiya, were arrested in July 2006.

The detection of the embezzlement and suspicions that heat meter operators did not measure heatpower consumption correctly led to a sharp drop in the payment of central heating bills in

Sofia which placed Toplofikatsiya in a grave situation. Subsequently the company was transformed from municipal-owned into a state-owned one.

Source: BTA