The former head of Sofia's heating utility Toplofikatsia Valentin Dimitrov was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Sofia Regional Court on May 30 2008, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) said.

As manager of PRO MARK company Dimitrov did not report to the Bulgarian National Bank the balance of payments data on a number of deals, worth about 37 million leva, the court decided. For this violation Dimitrov was given five years.

Dimitrov was acquitted on the other charge pressed by Prosecutor-General's Office. He was accused in failing to report financial transactions carried out in Austria for the period of October 20 1999/June 25 2003, which breached Bulgarian legislation. The money involved in those transactions amounted to 4.8 million leva.

The sentence can be appealed over the next 15 days.

Dimitrov told reporters he was pleased with the sentence although his lawyer called it "extremely hard".

Prosecutor Borislav Djambazki told BNT that he was pleased with the sentence, although he had asked for six years imprisonment for Dimitrov. "We will discus whether we want to appeal the acquittal on the other charge," he said.

Dimitrov has been under investigation for almost two years after he was arrested on charges of money laundering, malfeasance, fund diversion, tax evasion and currency fraud. Arrested in 2006, he spent 10 months in prison before finally being released on bail.

So far, Dimitrov's lawyers have managed to delay the lawsuits by postponing most of the court hearings on various grounds, mostly health reasons.