site.btaMagistrates Stage Silent Protest against Proposed Closure of Specialized Courts, Prosecution Offices

ESD 15:58:31 29-04-2021
LN1600ES.106
106 POLITICS - MAGISTRATES - PROTEST

Magistrates Stage Silent
Protest against Proposed Closure
of Specialized Courts, Prosecution Offices


Sofia, April 29 (BTA) - Magistrates, some of them enrobed, and staff of the Specialized Prosecution Office and the Appellate Specialized Prosecution Office staged a 15-minute silent protest in front of Sofia's Palace of Justice on Thursday against proposed legislative revisions that, if adopted, would lead to the closure of the specialized courts and prosecution offices. Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev and Supreme Judicial Council members joined them.

The amendments in question, moved by Democratic Bulgaria, were approved on first reading by the Parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee on Wednesday. There Is Such a People and Rise Up! Thugs Out! and BSP for Bulgaria backed the bills amending and supplementing the Judicial System Act and the Criminal Procedure Code, whereas GERB-UDF abstained.

Geshev explained that he joined the protesting prosecutors not in his capacity as Prosecutor General but as a prosecutor and magistrate supporting his colleagues who want to defend the interests of Bulgarian society. After the protest, he thanked his colleagues, telling them he was proud to be Prosecutor General, and was applauded as he left.

"We believe that the attempted elimination of the specialized justice bodies through urgent lobbyist 'legislation' is not in the interest of Bulgaria's citizens and society," said Geshev's Spokesperson Siika Mileva. She added that the revisions were either to the benefit of affluent defendants or of foreign national interests.

On Thursday morning, the specialized prosecutors and administrative staff issued a statement insisting that this is not the right time to raise the issue about the extraordinary nature of the specialized prosection offices. "If Bulgaria is a State governed by the rule of law, any conclusion that the specialized judicial authorities enforce the law ineffectively can only be based on a comparative analysis," the prosecutors argue. They suspect that the proposal to close down the specialized courts and prosecution offices interferes directly with the operation of the independent judiciary and serves foreign interests or those of organized crime groups. "We assume that the idea is to strip us of our functional immunity," the statement said.

Silent protests were also staged in front of courthouses in other towns.

Reacting to the proposed amendments to the Judicial System Act, the Association of Prosecutors in Bulgaria on Thursday also voiced concern over the rule of law situation and warned about a present danger of violating the Constitution and undermining the foundations of the State committed to the rule of law.

The Association argued that, if adopted, the revisions would turn the prosecution service into a political factor entirely dependent on the majority in Parliament. The amendments would thus trample upon all principles of democratic development and would seriously jeopardize the judiciary's independence, the statement said.

On Wednesday, the prosecution service said in a statement that the proposed changes were totally inconsistent with the proposed amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code, which entrust the Specialized Criminal Court with the examination of cases falling under the jurisdiction of the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) and would adversely affect interaction with the EPPO and, in particular with the European and the Delegated Prosecutors.

"If passed, the bills would be a serious fallback from the progress achieved by this country in combating corruption and acknowledged by our European partners, and would affect magistrates' rights to an extent requiring revisions at constitutional level. Any precipitate changes, without the requisite comprehensive consultation with all competent bodies and without the relevant thorough revisions to the procedural law, could not possibly achieve any effect whatsoever other than a negative effect," the prosecution service argued.

Also on Wednesday, Bulgaria's Chamber of Investigators, too, declared itself against the legislative revisions and argued that Democratic Bulgaria's bill deliberately includes a clause from the repealed Constitution of the People's Republic of Bulgaria of 1971 regarding the procedure for the appointment and dismissal of the Prosecutor General. "Such an election calls into serious question whether the Prosecutor General would actually be independent, given that he or she is rendered up by the National Assembly which, in its nature, is a political body," said the Chamber.

"You claim they were established in line with some recommendations. This may be true, but certainly no one imagined that Bulgaria would create a set of instruments for selective repression," he added.

In a televised interview on Thursday morning, Toma Bikov MP of GERB-UDF described the proposed closure as "absolutely outrageous" and likely to wreck the Bulgarian judicial system. In his opinion, the underlying idea of the amendments is to throw the cases of serious organized crime figures and oligarchs back to square one, release them from custody, and give them back their seized assets totalling 3.5 billion leva. The defendants in question are close to being sentenced now. Bikov recalled that the specialized jurisdictions were established on recommendations from the European Commission issued in 2009. Their jurisdiction was expanded in 2016 following a report by European prosecutors. The specialized bodies share the credit for the end in 2018 to the Commission's monitoring of the fight against organized crime in Bulgaria and for the discontinuance of the Coopertion and Verification Mechanism in 2019, the GERB-UDF MP pointed out.

Addressing Parliament in a declaration on behalf of his parliamentary group on Thursday, Democratic Bulgaria Floor Leader Hristo Ivanov called for the closure of the specialized courts and specialized prosecution offices. He dismissed GERB's criticism that the amending bills were not subjected to public consultation and that the revisions to the election legislation and the Judicial System Act were paving the way for a coup.

Referring to the specialized jurisdictions, Ivanov said: "There is a public consensus that those bludgeons must be closed, let's close them down without making cheap politics because it is in every Bulgarian's best interest to have one law for all."

Christian Wigand, the European Commission Spokesperson for Rule of Law, told a news conference on Thursday that the Commission is monitoring the drafting of the revisions concerning the closure of the specialized courts and prosecution offices in Bulgaria. Answering a question, he said the Commission does not usually comment on drafts, adding: "All we can say at this stage is that we are monitoring these developments in the context of the preparations of the 2021 Rule of Law Report." It has always been, and it remains important, that high-level corruption is being fought against effectively, he said.

The Commission is expected to present the new Rule of Law Reports in July.

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The first-instance Specialized Criminal Court was set up in 2011 to try cases of forming, directing and participation in an organized crime group and of participation in directing an organization or group which concludes transactions or derives benefit by use of force or intimidation, cases of other offences committed by a person contracted by, or acting in furtherance of a decision of, an organized crime group, including murder, bodily injury, kidnapping and illegal restraint, theft, robbery, coercion, sexual offences, official embezzlement, destroying and damaging another's property, blackmail, cross-border smuggling, documentary and financial offences, trafficking in cultural goods, trafficking in human beings, arson and offences against transport and communications, against public health and the environment, including production and distribution of explosives and narcotics. The instruments issued by the Specialized Court are subject to intermediate appellate review before the Appellate Specialized Court. This structure is parallelled by two specialized prosecution offices.

BTA's Brussels correspondent Nikolay Jeliazkov contributed to this story

RI/DD, LG