Benjamin Seifert’s client, Ventsislav Aleksandrov, was discharged from a Bulgarian extradition request on 3 June 2025. It was Bulgaria’s second attempt to extradite him. He had initially been arrested in March 2019 for alleged commercial burglaries, in Bulgaria, which are said to have taken place in July 2011. After his extradition was ordered in April 2019 the Divisional Court referred his case to the Court of Justice of the European Union in February 2020. It was the first extradition case to be referred to the Luxembourg Court which ruled that extradition could not take place when the European Arrest Warrant was issued by a prosecutor but without any scrutiny by a court in the issuing Member State. Without such scrutiny the Bulgarian authorities were at odds with EU law. Bulgarian law was then changed in order to comply with the CJEU’s judgment in this case and another called Svistov Regional Prosecutor’s Office v PI, no. C-648/20 PPU. The UK then left the EU and the Bulgarian authorities waited until 10 October 2024 when Mr Aleksandrov was arrested on an identical warrant, alleging the same matters.
By this time Mr Aleksandrov had been living and working with his wife. The extradition hearing took place on 17 April 2025 before District Judge (Magistrates’ Courts) King. In his ruling, discharging Mr Aleksandrov, the judge referred to the fact that he had lived a law-abiding life in the UK since 2011 and was working hard to support himself and his wife, having established a successful business. The judge took into account the substantial delay since the offending and also the fact that the couple had lost a child soon after his birth which had seriously affected them. Those issues, along with other factors, led the judge to conclude that his extradition would be a disproportionate interference in his rights to a private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The judicial authority did not appeal this decision.
Benjamin was instructed by Robert Katz of Hollingsworth Edwards.
See the Magistrates’ Court’s judgment here and the CJEU judgment here.
