Bulgaria’s Special Criminal Court confirmed on March 8 an earlier decision of the Sofia City Court to end a trial against two former ministers and several businessmen over the sale of a minority stake in electricity distribution company EVN Bulgaria Elektrorazpredelenie due to lack of evidence, daily Dnevnik reported.

The government in Sofia is desperate to prove the country deserves to become part of the core EU group, for example through entry to the Schengen zone and the Euro area. However, Bulgaria had been criticised for lack of progress on fighting corruption, and so far no top-level politicians or businesspeople have been sentenced although the prosecution has launched several investigations.

In December 2016 and January 2017, the prosecution raised charges against two members of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s first cabinet – former minister of economy Traicho Traikov and former deputy prime minister and finance minister Simeon Dyankov – in connection with the sale of a residual minority state stake in EVN Bulgaria Elektrorazpredelenie.

Several businessmen, including the publisher of Dnevnik and Capital Ivo Prokopiev, the head of brokerage company Bulbrokers Radoslav Rachev and two of the company’s employees, were also indicted.

The Special Criminal Court ended the trial as the case was presented by the wrong prosecution – the Sofia City Prosecution instead of the specialised criminal one.

Before that, the Sofia court ended its trial as it had found significant violations of the procedure that had led to limitation of the procedural rights of the defendants, and returned it to the prosecution. According to the judge who led the trial, the prosecution did not present enough evidence to demonstrate that the accused businessmen and politicians had committed a crime.

The prosecution launched an investigation into the sale of the stakes back in 2014, according to Dnevnik. The deal under investigation concerns the sale of the remaining 33% state-owned stake in EVN Bulgaria Elektrorazpredelenie. Bulbrokers, which is controlled by Prokopiev, has been accused of errors when determining the share prices for the deal. The company has denied the accusation.

Although in 2014 Bulgaria’s administrative court ruled that Bulbrokers did not break the law when determining the share prices, in January members of the company were indicted. One of them has now asked the court to either proceed with the case or lift all charges.

This is not the only investigation into former ministers in Bulgaria. In January, the Sofia city prosecutor’s office filed an indictment with Sofia city court against outgoing defence minister Nikolay Nenchev over his alleged failure to ensure aviation safety and the airworthiness of Bulgarian fighter aircraft.