Media Watchdogs Condemn Bulgarian Journalist’s Defamation Sentence

The City Court in Sofia, Bulgaria, has fined Capital Weekly judicial reporter Rossen Bossev in a defamation case presided over by a judge he had previously criticised - drawing criticism from domestic and international media watchdogs.

Bossev was one of three members of the Capital Weekly team who faced lawsuits from the former chairman of the Financial Supervision Commission, FSC, Stoyan Mavrodiev. He was fined 500 euros over two statements he made in a TV interview in January 2015.

While the other two were acquitted, Bossev was found guilty in his case, although the court did not question the validity of facts that have been publicly known for years, Capital Weekly said in a statement.

The reporter was fined for saying that Mavrodiev had used the FSC to punish Capital Weekly and Dnevnik, published by Economedia, after the commission imposed a record fine on it for allegedly manipulating the market.

The 75,000-euros fine, which another court annulled, was imposed after the two media outlets criticised the FSC for failing to act in the weeks leading up to the bankruptcy of Corbank in 2014.

Bossev was also fined for having said that Mavrodiev was associated with a money-laundering scheme run by Evelin Banev, who was later found guilty of executing financial operations with funds acquired through drug trafficking.

Mavrodiev was a legal counsellor certifying documents regarding the deal and was summoned by the prosecution in the case but never sentenced. The court ruled he could not have been associated with the deal because he was never found guilty over it.

The judge-rapporteur appointed to the defamation case, Petya Krancheva, was the subject of a series of articles written by...