Prosecutor's Office Initiates Probe Following ACF Report About Manipulated Supreme Judicial Council Vote

A prosecutor from the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office (SCPО) has initiated proceedings as a result of ACF’s report, filed in July, on violations in the election of members of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). The vote, which was held in June 2022, selected the six judges to sit on the SJC as members of the council’s judicial quota. The news of the initiation of the proceedings by the public prosecution was published by the daily Dnevnik.

The ACF referred the case to the prosecutor’s office because an expert report had established “various anomalies” in the use of the electronic voting system. According to the report, multiple votes were cast from the same IP address. There were many IP addresses from which dozens of votes were cast, as well as many examples of consecutive voting with ballots belonging to different voters. In all these cases, multiple votes were cast from IP addresses belonging to courts, although the voting system allows judges to vote from their mobile phones and home computers.

Meanwhile, information from the Ministry of Justice has revealed that a total of 28 judges logged into the courthouse over the two days when the vote was held. In contrast, some 200 votes were cast from these locations.

The supervising prosecutor has initiated a probe into a suspected computer crime under Art.319(a) of the Criminal Code, ordering the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Computer Crime Branch of the Directorate General for Combating Organised Crime to carry out a joint inquiry.

A deadline of three months has been set and the probe is nearing completion.

The deadline for the prosecutor to decide whether there is sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed is one month.

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