ACF: The Prosecutor’s Office once again had pressed charges for something which does not constitute a crime

On 14.09.2020, the media informed that the former Deputy Foreign Minister Hristo Angelichin was definitively acquitted on the purchase of telephone exchanges for 12 embassies, for which he was accused of mismanagement.

The Anti-Corruption Fund (ACF) examined this case in detail in its Annual Monitoring Report on the Anti-Corruption institutions in Bulgaria “Anti-Corruption institutions: activity without visible results.” The report, published in June 2020, analyzes the institutions’ actions in 40 key cases of high public importance concerning persons holding public office. The analysis concluded that the fight against high-level corruption has not led to effective punishments in the last five years.

“This is another acquittal where the court has ruled that the Prosecutor’s Office had pressed charges for something that does not constitute an offense,” commented ACF’s senior legal expert Andrey Yankulov on the verdict of the Supreme Court of Cassation. “It is the most common outcome of criminal cases of high-level corruption in the last five years.”

In addition to the case against Hristo Angelichin, another 7 of the 40 key cases described and analyzed in the ACF report ended with a final acquittal, ruled predominantly because the charges have been found non-substantial – i.e., the charges have been filed for something that the court did not find to constitute a crime.

You can read more about the shortcomings identified by the ACF in the activities of anti-corruption institutions in Bulgaria in the report “Anti-corruption institutions: activity without visible results”