The Bulgarian State Prosecutor Ivan Gosev wrote to the general secretariats of the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC), criticising Serbia for failing to surrender Bulgarian citizen Tsvetan Vasilev, whom the country issued a red Interpol warrant for in 2014, the FoNet news agency reported on Wednesday.

Radio Free Europe (RSE) reported that the prosecutor also addressed the presidents of the European Parliament and the European Commission asking them to have that failure in mind “in future assessment of Serbia’s readiness as a candidate country for the EU membership.”

Vasilev lives in Serbia since 2014. He owns a company in Serbia, Serbian Glass Factory, which is facing bankruptcy procedures, according to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) report from 2017.

The Belgrade Court told BIRN back in May 2017 that no decision had yet been made on the conditions for the extradition of Vasilev to Bulgaria.

“Two earlier decisions of this court were abolished by the Appeal Court in Belgrade and returned for re-trial,” it added.

BIRN also reported that in 2014 Vasilev’s “Corporate Commercial Bank collapsed in by far the biggest banking collapse in the history of Bulgaria. The lost assets are valued at around two 2 billion Euros.”

It added that “Bulgaria seeks his extradition on the grounds of running a Ponzi scheme and of illegally acquiring 103 million Euros in assets from the now failed bank.” Five years after Sofia issued the red Interpol warrant, Belgrade had not ordered extradition detention for Vasilev, and only took his passport away.

Gosev said that Bulgaria sent two requests to Serbia – in September 2014 and in May 2015.

He also wrote to the Belgrade Higher Court reminding it that warrant was still in force.

Gosev’s attempt was the second of the kind. Sofia addressed both CoE and CDPC in February 2016, but without any result.