Annual monitoring report on investigations of high-level corruption “Anti-corruption institutions: activity without visible results.”
You can download the report from here.
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.
Some of the report’s conclusions:
– the efforts to combat high-level corruption in the past five years have not led to any effective punishment. Only three of the 40 examined cases have resulted in final convictions. This percentage is significantly lower than the overall percentage of convictions achieved by the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office.
– None of the examined final court verdicts were pronounced in 2018 and 2019. There are no prison sentences on all the reviewed cases, only suspended prison sentences.
– There are seven final acquittals, issued primarily on cases where the charges were unfounded, meaning that the indicted actions of the defendants were not considered criminal by the courts concerned.
– Around one quarter of all the examined cases (11 out of 40) are still at the pre-trial phase of proceedings, or their status remains unknown
– The analysis of the conflict of interest cases decided in 2019 shows cases in which a conflict of interest has been identified are less compared to 2018 (14 cases in 2019 compared to 28 cases in 2018).
– In 2019, CAFIAP continued to follow a formalistic approach in the ascertainment of conflicts of interest, which results in a failure to investigate all possible relationships that can lead to dependences and to exercising official duties under undue influence.