site.btaValentina Madjarova Heads Specialized Prosecution Office

June 23 (BTA) - The Prosecutors' Chamber of the Supreme Judicial Council on Wednesday elected Valentina Madjarova to head the Specialized Prosecution Office (SPO). Madjarova has held the post on an interim basis since the middle of 2020.

At a hearing earlier in the day, she thanked the SPO prosecutors and investigators "for the courage and the stamina" they have shown over the last few days. "It is a difficult time for everyone, particularly for us," she said.

According to Madjarova, the results of the fight against high-level corruption "are below what we would like to see." She said public intolerance towards graft is already an indisputable fact, but the success in combating it also depends on the work of the Counter-corruption and Unlawfully Acquired Assets Forfeiture Commission, the Interior Ministry services, the State Agency for National Security and the Public Financial Inspection Agency, among other institutions.

The coronavirus pandemic has affected the SPO's work, Madjarova said. She noted that many of the acquittals rendered by the Specialized Criminal Court concern cases involving non-SPO prosecutors.

As a problem of the SPO, she singled out the large number of cases which have been delayed by prosecutors in the pretrial phase. She said she has taken steps to change that, as a result of which the number of such cases has halved from an initial 147. Returned cases and acquittals are also among the existing problems.

In 2020, corruption-related pretrial proceedings were supervised by SPO prosecutors in 274 cases, including 86 cases instituted the same year, Madjarova said. Seventy-three of these cases were completed, compared to 39 in 2019. Ninety-two investigative cases were resolved, which was 56 per cent more than in 2019. Subsequently, 17 prosecutorial instruments against 56 persons were submitted to court. Five persons were convicted (compared to one in 2019); two of them received conditional sentences and three got probations. After 13 pretrial procedures for core corruption, seven cases involving 31 persons reached the court phase. Also in 2020, pretrial proceedings were supervised by SPO prosecutors in 205 cases in which public officials had apparently acted from corrupt motives, compared to 160 cases in 2019.

These data do not indicate a failure to deal with high-level corruption, Madjarova said. Rather, they represent a good starting point for successful investigations, she added. RY/VE
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