site.btaActing Prosecutor General Demands Disciplinary Penalty against Dimitar Frantisek Petrov of Sofia City Prosecution Office

Acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov has submitted a request to the Prosecutors College of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) for the imposition of a disciplinary penalty against Prosecutor Dimitar Frantisek Petrov of the Sofia City Prosecution Office, the prosecution service said on Wednesday.

The proposal is based on a report of a comprehensive review into Petrov’s work in the period June 30, 2021 - June 28, 2024, carried out by a team of prosecutors.

A check was made of all pending pre-trial proceedings and casefiles Petrov was involved with and of the suspended pre-trial proceedings he supervised. The findings pointed to unreasonable delays in trials, a slow pace of investigative actions, and a lack of supervision over investigating authorities to ensure the lawful and timely conduct of the investigations.

One of the findings in the report shows that Petrov failed to lead and supervise the investigations in a number of pre-trial proceedings. It was found that in one of the cases a person was charged and detained for up to 72 hours with no grounds for that.

In another pre-trial proceeding having to do with money laundering, procedural actions were carried out following an "extremely incorrect, biased, and unlawful assessment of facts and circumstances", which resulted in the inability of another supervising prosecutor to take lawful actions, the prosecution service said in its press release.

Petrov had supervised 41 pre-trial proceedings, the investigation of which had not been completed. The check found delays and irregularities in the investigation led by him as supervising prosecutor.

The request sent to the SJC includes 80 pages of the team's detailed findings. It argues that Petrov’s workload in the aforementioned period did not constitute an obstacle to the diligent performance of his duties.