The Anti-Corruption Fund (ACF) published a video with journalist Nikolay Stoyanov with the title „Battle with fear“. It is the second part of the ACF’s series „Under Target: Three Free Feathers“, which tells three personal stories about SLAPP cases and pressure on journalists in Bulgaria.
Nikolay Stoyanov is a longtime financial editor at Capital, known for his work on topics such as the bankruptcy of CCB, the OneCoin cryptocurrency scam, and the abuse of large loans given out at the Bulgarian Development Bank.
Following his work on the Bulgarian Development Bank case, three lawsuits were filed against him by Stoyan Mavrodiev, then CEO of the Bulgarian Development Bank, and Michael Timvios, who acted as a front for Mavrodiev according to Stoyanov’s investigations. The lawsuits filed in each of the cases are for BGN 40,000.
„I am far from thinking that Mr Mavrodiev has a pressing need for this amount. His salary at the Bulgarian Development Bank for just a month was in the order of the 40 thousand he could have eventually taken as claims in the case. The purpose of such people with such lawsuits is precisely to instill fear or at least self-censorship in journalists,“, Nikolay Stoyanov commented in the ACF film.
In the end, the charges in the cases against him were withdrawn without complaint.
At the end of April, the Anti-Corruption Fund, in partnership with the Association of European Journalists, will present a comprehensive legal analysis of the lawsuits against journalists in Bulgaria, which bear the characteristics of SLAPP cases or sham cases. The analysis describes and analyses court decisions in more than 50 such cases.
The video was produced in the framework of the project „Media Freedom Research with a Special Focus on SLAPP Cases in Bulgaria“, implemented in partnership between the Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria and the Anti-Corruption Fund with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bulgaria. The content of the video is the responsibility of the Anti-Corruption Fund and does not necessarily reflect the position of the Government of the Netherlands.
