Businessman Kostadin Hadjiivanov, the president of Belasitsa football club in the city of Petrich near the Bulgarian-Greek border, will be extradited from Greece to Germany, a court in Thessaloníki ruled on September 11 2008, Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily reported.

Hadjiivanov's lawyer Ivo Stefanov said that Hadjiivanov would appeal the ruling, which would for certain delay his extradition.

Hadjiivanov was arrested on September 1 2008 by Greek police when entering the country from Bulgaria. He was arrested after a European arrest warrant was issued against him by a German court in relation to a cigarette smuggling investigation going on in Augsburg, Germany.

Allegedly, Hadjiivanov has shares in a company that had tried to export 450 000 cartons of cigarettes to the UK. The cigarettes were intercepted in Germany, hence the German warrant.

Hadjiivanov's arrest came as a surprise to Bulgarian police, after it became clear that they were not notified by their German colleagues about it. Later, it was announced that the warrant was actually sent to Bulgaria last November, but police in Hadjiivanov's home town of Petrich did not take it into account claiming that it was not under their jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, Hadjiivanov managed to register his "For our Petrich" coalition for the upcoming ad hoc elections for municipal councilors in Petrich, scheduled for October 11. The deadline for submitting the registration papers was September 10 and Stefanov said that Hadjiivanov had signed the papers while in court in Thessaloníki.

Hadjiivanov won a seat in the council at the October 2007 municipal elections on the ticket of "For our Petrich". On June 30 2008, the elections in Petrich were declared void by the Supreme Administrative Court after seven parties had challenged the results. The court found that in six polling stations the election day ended after 8pm, an hour later then the time provided in the law.