April 20 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Alfa Finance Holding said on Tuesday that the Appellate Specialised Criminal Court has upheld the acquittal decision of the lower court regarding the participation of a company owner, three employees of its unit Bulbrokers and two ex-government ministers in the privatisation of a stake in power utility EVN Bulgaria Elektrorazpredelenie.
The appellate court upheld the decision of the first instance court, saying that the sale of the remaining state-owned stake of 33% in the power utility majority owned by Austrian energy group EVN, had not caused damages to the state and the actions of the six defendants can not be classified as crimes, Alfa Finance Holding said in a statement.
The case was launched in 2017 against Ivo Prokopiev, a major shareholder in Alfa Finance Holding and founder and owner of Economedia group - the publisher of media outlets Capital and Dnevnik, former finance minister Simeon Dyankov, former economy and energy minister Traycho Traykov, and three employees of local investment intermediary Bulbrokers.
The minority stake in EVN Bulgaria Elektrorazpredelenie was privatised in 2011 for over 90 million levs ($56 million/46 million euro) through the sale of the shares on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange.
The case has been used as a tool to exert systematic pressure on Prokopiev, Dyankov and Traykov over the past four years, Alfa Finance Holding said in its statement.
The second instance court's decision is not final and can be appealed. It has not yet been published in Bulgaria's court database, a SeeNews check showed.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)