Nineteen-year-old Michael Shields, the Brit who in April this year was sentenced on 10 years imprisonment in Bulgaria, appears close to being transferred to a British prison.

Shields was found guilty of the attempted murder of Bulgarian bartender Martin Georgiev (27) in Zlatni Pyasutsi (Golden Sands) resort near Varna.

Georgiev was hit on the head with a paving slab on May 30 2005, while trying to prevent a quarrel among a group of British football fans at the resort. Shields and his companions were in Bulgaria after attending a Liverpool FC match in Istanbul. Shields claimed he was innocent. At the same time Graham Sankey, one of Shields’ companions, made a written statement in the UK that he had hit Georgiev.

In terms of the rules of court procedure, and because Sankey refused to come to Bulgaria, the court declined to admit Sankey’s statement as evidence.

As part of his sentence, Shields has to pay 130 000 leva. On August 18, The Liverpool Echo (no relation to The Sofia Echo) said that Shields family had paid the first instalment of the fine.

Campaigners had already paid a deposit to the Bulgarian authorities to secure his transfer to a UK prison, the newspaper said.

The Liverpool Echo described the difficulties the Shields family was going through to raise funds to pay the fine. The newspaper said that the family were broke because of all their efforts campaigning for Shields’s release, and said that the first instalment had been paid with borrowed money.

According to the newspaper, Shields will first be  transported to Wandsworth prison in London for a month-long assessment before being transferred to a prison in the north-west of England. As for the victim, Georgiev, a father of two, the money will be scant compensation for what he has been put through.

In an interview with Bulgarian private national television channel bTV, Georgiev said that he had abandoned of getting the full compensation to which he was entitled. So far Georgiev has received 74 000 leva.

Georgiev said that legal costs and medical expenses to deal with his head injuries had left him and his family in debt. The money he had received, however, would not even cover the cost of an urgently-required operation on his fractured jaw.

Georgiev has returned to work at the bar where the assault took place.

“I don’t hate Michael Shields, but to tell you the truth, he turned my life upside down. I would rather not see him again ever, because I am not sure how I would react,” Georgiev told bTV.