site.bta PM Calls on Supreme Judicial Council as It Mulls Closing Chenalova-Yaneva Probe

PM Calls on Supreme Judicial Council as It Mulls Closing Chenalova-Yaneva Probe

Sofia, January 14 (BTA) - Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov appeared at a meeting of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) on Thursday while it was deliberating on whether or not to close a probe into a scandal over leaked wiretapped conversations between two former judges which cast doubt on the independence of the judiciary. He urged the top administrative authority of the judicial system to "keep him out of political games" and denied having any influence on the judiciary.

The leaked conversations between dismissed judge Roumyana Chenalova, former Sofia City Court president Vladimira Yaneva and an unidentified male companion suggest that various high-ranking members of the executive and the judiciary, including Prime Minister Borissov and Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov, have allegedly tried to influence the course of a probe against Yaneva over unlawful surveillance warrants signed by her.

The Prime Minister told the SJC on Thursday that, "honestly, I have nothing to do with the wiretapped conversations".

He criticized Supreme Cassation Court President Lozan Panov for making a political statement by criticizing the work of the GERB group in Parliament and said that interfering in these matters was not his business.

Borissov's visit to the SJC was apparently provoked by a text message he sent to Panov, an outspoken critic of the status quo in the judiciary, which was shown to the press by Panov himself. The message read: "Lozan Panov again proposed to summon you to a hearing at the SJC over the wiretapped conversations. The proposal was rejected". It appears that Borissov forwarded to Panov a message he had received from a SJC member, keeping him updated in real time on the proceedings at the SJC.

The PM confirmed that he had forwarded the message but declined to name the original sender, saying it made no difference.

During his brief stay at the SJC, the head of government said that he was unwilling to comment on the Yaneva-Chenalova conversations scandal because he did not want to be accused of interfering with the judiciary. "I have never taken the liberty of telling you what to do. [...] I just have the bad habit of receiving anybody who is in trouble," said Borissov.

"I am not a prosecutor or a judge, but I get the reports," he said, apparently referring to the European Commission reports under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism monitoring Bulgaria's progress in combatting organized crime and corruption and reforming the judiciary. "You, not me, should be doing the reform in the judiciary. But it is us who gets the recommendations and the reports."

Next, he invited the SJC to the weekly Cabinet meeting next Wednesday to ask them about the progress of the judicial reform.

He also said that anybody who wants to enter politics should do so and beat him in the elections.

Yaneva-Chenalova probe closed

The Prime Minister's appearance at the SJC interrupted a discussion on the implications of the Yaneva-Chenalova conversations. It picked up from where it had ended, and a decision was ultimately adopted to abandon the probe, as proposed by the SJC Ethics Commission. 

The Commission concluded that the probe had failed to collect sufficient evidence of any violations of the rules and that the recordings of the conversations were not reliable because they had been doctored.

During the discussion, Panov asked who was the expert who analyzed the recordings and why his or her name was not indicated. He also said that even if the recordings had been doctored, it does not mean that the facts emerging from the conversations were not true.

Panov and SJC member Kalin Kalpakchiev proposed that the probe should continue.
   
Panov also said that the competent authorities should react to the text message that he had received from the Prime Minister.

Former Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov reacted to Thursday's developments by a Facebook post. "This is not a scandal. This is a constitutional crisis," he wrote, quoted by dnevnik.bg. "While the SJC and the prosecution service are trying to hush down the Chenalova-Yaneva probe, what happened today confirmed convincingly the content of the [Chenalova-Yaneva] conversations. In Bulgaria, the separation of powers and the rule of law are overruled by text messages - not even by a law as they are in Poland."