To initiate disciplinary proceedings to impose a disciplinary penalty against Borislav Sarafov - de facto acting as Prosecutor General of the Republic of Bulgaria, for committed disciplinary violations.
This proposal is submitted by the Minister of Justice Andrey Yankulov to the Prosecutorial College (PC) of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC).
This was announced today by the Ministry of Justice.
Yankulov wants to impose a disciplinary penalty appropriate to the severity of the violations, namely disciplinary dismissal from office.
According to the Minister, the disciplinary liability of Borislav Sarafov for the actions and inactions committed in his capacity as de facto acting Prosecutor General The Prosecutor General cannot be dismissed on the grounds of the illegal nature of holding the position.
“In the past months, a series of written statements were circulated in the public domain, involving the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Bulgaria, which created high institutional tension between the Bulgarian Prosecutor's Office and the court, lowered the prestige of the judiciary and undermined public trust in it“, the minister's proposal states, which sets out five groups of relevant circumstances.
One of them is based mainly on the official communication between the Bulgarian Prosecutor's Office and the European Prosecutor's Office on the case of the temporarily suspended European Prosecutor from Bulgaria, Teodora Georgieva, announced by the Prosecutor's Office itself. From the publication of the prosecutor's office and media information it is clear that Borislav Sarafov claimed at a meeting with European prosecutors that the Bulgarian prosecutor's office has evidence of bribes received by Georgieva, and the investigation during which the evidence in question was collected was started only after this meeting. Subsequently, although the unknown prosecutor overseeing this investigation made a written statement, sent to the attention of the European prosecutor Laura Kövesi, that sufficient evidence of corruption had been collected against Georgieva, the Bulgarian prosecutor did not take any action for criminal prosecution, which he was obliged to take upon such a finding. Although he was aware of this fact, Borislav Sarafov did not exercise legality supervision over the prosecutor supervising the investigation.
Two of the remaining groups of grounds relate to Borislav Sarafov's gross mixing of his public function with personal interest and inadmissible use of the institutional authority of the prosecutor's office for purposes incompatible with the powers of the position he actually holds. These are the publicly known cases in which Borislav Sarafov requests the disqualification of a judge from the Sofia City Court, who is to rule on an appeal against the refusal of the “ad hoc prosecutor“ Daniela Taleva to initiate pre-trial proceedings on materials that have become known as “EuroLeaks“, as well as a request to the President, Deputy President of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Presidium of the Supreme Judicial Council from the random distribution when determining the next “ad hoc prosecutor“ to exclude more than five hundred judges - all members of the Union of Judges in Bulgaria. Sarafov's requests, although they concern him personally as affected or potentially affected by an inspection or investigation by the special prosecutor, were submitted in his institutional capacity, which he claims to have, with which they impermissibly involve the entire institution of the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Bulgaria.
The fourth group of circumstances refers to one of the rare public statements of the acting Prosecutor General - that on the "Petrohan" case, in which Mr. Sarafov made an unconsidered public statement at the very beginning of the investigation, when the investigative versions should be at the very initial stage of clarification. “The statement, which gives specific assessments of individual facts related to the investigation, poses a real risk of impacting the internal conviction of the supervising prosecutor and the investigative bodies, which should be based on the objective, comprehensive and complete examination of all the circumstances of the case, as well as the law“, the reasons say.
The fifth circumstance is related to the position-response of the prosecutor's office, provoked by a publication on the website of the Supreme Court of Cassation, according to which the powers of the acting prosecutor general have been terminated by virtue of the law and a request for the reopening of a criminal case filed by the acting prosecutor general does not constitute a valid referral to the court. The position-response contains unacceptable assessments such as “the leadership of the Supreme Court of Cassation is involving the institution in an attempt to achieve illegitimate goals“, with “its current actions openly contribute to the erosion of public authority towards the main pedestal of the state – its judicial system, in one voice with certain political forces“.
It is indicated that the Supreme Court of Cassation made “an attempt to manipulate public opinion“ and “with its actions, the leadership of the Supreme Judicial Council […] pursues solely and exclusively political goals and deepens the created situation of instability in the judiciary, which in turn is dictated by certain political circles and their individual representatives in the judicial system itself“. As a de facto representative of the prosecution, through the expressed public position, Borislav Sarafov formulates extremely extreme statements affecting the independence, good name and authority of the Supreme Judicial Council and leading to a violation of the established institutional ethics.
In conclusion, Minister Yankulov emphasizes that the actions and inactions of the de facto acting Prosecutor General constitute serious disciplinary violations, for which he should be imposed the most severe disciplinary punishment - disciplinary dismissal from office.
He insists before the Supreme Judicial Council for the urgent initiation of disciplinary proceedings.