site.btaProsecution Actively Working on Over 60 Reports of Real Estate Fraud

The Minister of Justice, Georgi Georgiev, the acting administrative head of the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office, Svetlana Dimitrova, the spokesperson of the Sofia District Prosecutor’s Office, Nikolay Nikolaev, and the head of the Regional Directorate of the Interior Ministry in Sofia, Lyubomir Nikolov, gave a press conference on Monday at the Sofia District Court, in connection with initiated pre-trial proceedings on real estate fraud.

The Sofia District Prosecutor's Office is actively working on more than 60 reports of real estate fraud, Justice Minister Georgiev said at the press conference. 

The Minister said that the authorities started a war against the so-called real estate mafia a month ago and reiterated his remarks of Sunday that the real estate mafia "proved to be stronger and better organized than I had thought". He added, though: “The main point is that it is not stronger than the State. We monitor every new scheme so that we can address it through legislative changes”. 

The Sofia District Prosecutor's Office is investigating about 33 cases of real estate fraud, 25 checks are being carried out on citizens’ reports alleging such fraud, Svetlana Dimitrova said. She added that investigations are underway into many pre-trial proceedings concerning false documents related to property ownership rights. Prosecutor Dimitrova explained that in a number of cases, following the inspections, it turned out that this was not a matter of real estate fraud, but of unsettled civil-law or contractual relations.

She added that at the moment, the use of documents prepared in Russian and Ukrainian is quite often investigated due to the presence of many Ukrainian citizens residing in Bulgaria.