site.btaParliamentary Committee Hears Out Nominees for Counter-corruption Commission Chairperson

December 3 (BTA)

The office of the chairperson of the CUAAFC has been vacant
since July, when a real estate scandal forced the then chair,
Plamen Georgiev, to resign. After he left the CUAAFC, he became
a rank-and-file prosecutor, but shortly after that the
government appointed him Bulgarian Consul in Valencia and he
left for Spain.

At Tuesday's hearing, the two candidates for the job, outgoing
Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov and MP Simeon Naidenov of the
 Volya parliamentary group, presented their concepts about the
CUAAFC's work, after which members of the parliamentary
Anti-corruption Committee and NGOs asked them questions
concerning their concepts.

Tsatsarov officially confirmed earlier reports that the National
 Revenue Agency did not detect any wrongdoing during a probe
into the financial interests and the incomes of Georgiev, the
former CUAAFC chair. The probe was ordered by Tsatsarov in his
capacity as Prosecutor General amid the real estate scandal.

Both Tsatsarov and Naidenov disapproved of the idea about
counter-corruption education in early childhood.

In his concept, Naidenov lays particular emphasis on the
CUAAFC's accountability and the need for a campaign to raise
public awareness of the problem of corruption. He finds it
necessary to increase the CUAAFC directorates and to recruit new
 employees.

The main highlights in Tsatsarov's concept are administration
and human resources management. He sees a need to downsize the
CUAAFC staff and restructure the departments. Tsatsarov calls
for setting up an advisory board of experts and scientists and a
 public board with the CUAAFC. He also proposes media monitoring
 to ensure timely response to any evidence of wrongdoing.
Conflict-of-interest declarations should be changed, he said,
and universal guidelines should be adopted for filling them out.

Tsatsarov believes that too many categories of senior public
officials are required to submit conflict-of-interest
declarations. While it may not be advisable to exempt all
municipal councillors from the requirement, it may be a good
idea to limit them to the municipal councillors in the national
capital Sofia, the regional capitals and other towns above a
certain population size, he suggested. NV/VE