site.btaProsecution Service Cannot and Should Not Remain the Same, Says Acting Prosecutor General

Acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov Thursday presented to the Plenum of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) the results of checks of how prosecutors had handled pre-trial cases. He stressed that the prosecution service cannot and should not remain the same. "It should work well, and its work should be assessed by society, not by the prosecution service itself," he said.

"Society expects hard work, we owe it to society. I am aware that the prosecution service has accumulated a lot of systematic errors that still need to be corrected," Sarafov added, noting that some of the proposed changes in the Constitution are in view of the long-standing problems in the prosecution service.

Sarafov said that checks have established evidence of Supreme Cassation Prosecution Office prosecutors mishandling checks ordered by former prosecutor general Ivan Geshev. Some of these checks were carried out against members of the SJC, he added.

The checks looked into how more than 70 unfinished pre-trial proceedings for publicly prosecutable offence, committed by magistrates, persons with immunity, members of the Council of Ministers, and for crimes against the Republic. Violations were found in most of them.

The violations have been reported to the SJC Prosecutors College so that it can consider disciplinary punishment for several prosecutors and investigators, among them the administrative head of the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office, Nevena Zartova, as well as Supreme Cassation Prosecution Office prosecutor Maksim Kolev, who has delayed ruling on 98 case files.