April 6 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Alfa Finance Holding said on Tuesday that the Sofia Appellate Court has issued a final decision dismissing the criminal charges against three of its major shareholders over the sale of shares in the capital of mineral extracting and processing company Kaolin.
The court dropped the charges of transformation of illegal property brought against Ivo Prokopiev, Ivan Nenkov and Konstantin Nenov on March 26 as it found no crime had been committed related to their involvement as board members of Alfa Finance Holding in the sale of shares in Kaolin on the stock exchange in Sofia, Alfa Finance Holding said in a statement.
In 2018, Prokopiev, Nenkov and Nenov were charged with the sale of a controlling stake in Kaolin which they knew had been acquired in a criminal way. The pre-trial proceedings were terminated on October 23 of last year by the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office but the motives for the decision were challenged by the defendants because the legal basis for termination was not formulated correctly, according to the statement.
The Sofia Appellate Court upheld the appeal by the defendants and corrected the legal basis for termination of the criminal proceedings 'due to absence of a committed crime', Alfa Finance said, adding that the pre-trial proceedings were used as means of exercising pressure against Prokopiev, founder and owner of Economedia group - the publisher of media outlets Capital and Dnevnik.
Kaolin was privatised in 2000. In 2012, its majority owner, Alfa Finance Holding, sold its 67.32% stake to Germany’s Quarzwerke for 140 million levs ($84.5 million/71.6 million euro).