Bulgarian Ex-Agriculture Head Gets Away with Forging Diploma

Kalina Ilieva, the notorious former head of Bulgaria's Agriculture Fund, has received a 3-year suspended sentence with a five-year period of probation for forging her own university diploma.

The Sofia District Court's controversial ruling followed a plea bargain on behalf of Ilieva. On Monday, she admitted to forging her diploma, telling the court she only has high-school education.

She stated that she was unemployed at the moment.

Her plea bargain was accepted, the BGNES news agency informs. The prosecutor took into consideration the facts that she is the mother of a young child and has no criminal record.

Kalina Ilieva, former CEO of the Bulgarian Agriculture Fund, never took any classes and never went to any lectures at the University for Engineering and Economics in Berlin, it was recently confirmed.

According to the indictment, between September 30 and November 28 2007, Ilieva produced a false document – a master's degree diploma dated October 4, 2007, with her name and personally forged the signatures of two German professors.

She was also charged with using and submitting with the Education Ministry on November 28th 2007, four fake documents as proof she has a college degree.

Ilieva was dismissed from the post at the beginning of October 2010, after it became clear she tried to conceal her pregnancy from her superiors. Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, said at the time she lied to him she had a tumor in order to explain her gaining weight while Agriculture Minister, Miroslav Naydenov, announced she told him she was going to Germany to undergo surgery, only to learn days later she had given birth.

In the aftermath, it was also revealed that Ilieva's university diploma from Germany was forged and the German prosecutor began a probe against her. The German investigation was halted after it became clear the diploma had not been forged on German territory.

Kalina Ilieva is the daughter of former Sofia fire brigade chief Iliya Iliev, who is a friend of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

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