The facts, a legal analysis, conclusions, and an appeal to the institutions

The Specialized Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) published a press release informing the public that on 7 July, it had carried out a search and seizure of a property belonging to Iliya Zlatanov. Zlatanov is one of the persons interviewed in ACF’s short movie “The Eight Dwarfs” that has accumulated over 1 million views since its release. The film has attracted considerable interest because of the facts and allegations it shares about the exercise of undue influence over the SPO’s activities and its questionable disposition of physical evidence of great value.

This report marks the beginning of annual independent civic monitoring of cases of (alleged) corruption crimes and conflicts of interest at the highest levels of government. The monitoring consists of two parts: (1) analysis of 40 key criminal cases in the pre-trial and trial phase for the period 2014-2019 and (2) assessment of decisions on signals of conflict of interest of the Commission for Combating Corruption and Confiscation of Illegal the acquired property (KPKONPI) for 2019. The report provides a concrete answer to the question of what are the results of the fight against political corruption in Bulgaria in the last five years.

In a press release dated 12.5.2020, the Prosecutor’s Office of Republic of Bulgaria (PORB) announced that the Prosecutor-General had approved guidelines according to which ‘action will be taken to seize motor vehicles as items of evidence when initiating pretrial proceedings of intentional traffic criminal offenses. In addition to that, the competent courts would be petitioned, requesting the issuance of orders authorizing the confiscation of the vehicles concerned.’ Thus, the scope of the current provisions of the Criminal Code, which provide for ‘the confiscation by the State of the means used to commit an intentional crime by the perpetrator,’ is effectively being expanded.

The declaration of a state of emergency in Bulgaria in order to restrict the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 has raised some rule-of-law concerns with regards to certain manifestations of the constitutional function of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Bulgaria (PORB) to conduct prosecution proceedings, i.e., to press charges on perpetrators for committed crimes. In our capacity of representatives of the NGO sector with a mission to monitor whether the authorities exercise power in the public interest, we believe that this issue should be highlighted for several important reasons that, in our opinion, point to a serious risk of abuse of power

The report evaluates the legislative framework and the case law, accumulated in preceding years. On the basis of the above-mentioned analysis and evaluation, a number of problem areas in the implementation of the existing legislation are outlined.