Sofia Regional Court launched the first of a number of cases against former head of Toplofikatsiya-Sofia Valentin Dimitrov in spite of desperate attempts of his defence lawyer to put off the trial and under a false bomb alarm in the court's building, mediapool.bg reported.

On January 18 Dimitrov faced the magistrates accused of currency fraud.

The charges included financial deals in violation of currency legislation, with a total value of over 5 million leva, which had taken place between October 20 1999 and June 25 2003.

From the end of November 2003 to mid-2006 Dimitrov again violated currency laws as the manager of PRO MARK when he did not declare to the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) a number of deals worth over 16 million leva for the needs of the balance of payments' statistics, mediapool.bg said.

Shortly before the beginning of the trial against Dimitrov Sofia Regional Court received a tip off about a bomb having been placed in the building. The alleged bombwas not dedicated to former the Toplofikatsiya head, but to the visit of Russian president Vladimir Putin, at least this is what the anonymous caller claimed.

A check of the building found no bomb.