The Judicial College of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) elected Russi Alexiev as President of the Sofia City Court (SCC) at its meeting today. Nine of the members of the Judicial College voted “For“ and two voted “Against“. The hearing of Russi Alexiev, which took place before the vote, lasted about four hours.
"My candidacy for President of the Sofia City Court (SCC) is motivated primarily by the fact that I have the desire and energy to continue what I have started and to further develop the good practices that were imposed in the court," said Judge Russi Alexiev. Russi Aleksiev is the Deputy President of the Sofia City Court, Head of the “Criminal Department”, information is provided on the court's website.
He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Sofia University in 1998. He was a judicial candidate at the Sofia City Court in the period 1999 - 2000, after which he took up the position of “junior prosecutor“ at the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office (SPO). In 2003 he was reappointed to the position of “prosecutor“ at the SPO, and from 11.08.2006 he was the head of the largest department in the SPO - “Economic Crimes“. In 2008 he took up the position of “deputy – district prosecutor“, which he held until 11.07.2013. At the same time, at the end of this period he was also an acting district prosecutor.
According to a decision of the Supreme Judicial Council of 24.07.2014, he was reappointed to the position of “judge“ in the Sofia City Court – Higher Administrative Court, which he joined on 07.07.2015. He holds the rank of “judge in the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court“. During his professional development, Judge Aleksiev has participated in numerous national and international trainings and seminars held in the USA, Greece, Belgium, Estonia, Spain, etc.
At the beginning of today's meeting, it was announced that the other candidate for the chairman of the SCC, Alexey Trifonov, had withdrawn from participating in the procedure for the selection of the chairman.
"The first actions will be related to providing more judicial assistants, as well as interaction with colleagues regarding the workload of the departments in the SCC and their equalization," the newly elected chairman of the SCC told BTA after the meeting. "Within the powers of the president of the court and the judicial self-government are measures that concern filling the staff", he explained.
When asked whether special intelligence means are used too often, Aleksiev explained that this is within the competence of the National Bureau for Control of Special Intelligence Means, and only the panels that consider the cases and that rule on the quality of the evidence collected with special intelligence means can answer for it.
"One of my first tasks, if I am elected president of the court, is to initiate the continuation of the work on developing rules for the secondment of judges as soon as possible and for them to be finally adopted", Aleksiev said during his hearing before the Judicial College of the SJC. According to him, this will ensure the transparent and predictable secondment of judges to the Sofia City Court and from the Sofia City Court to other bodies of the judiciary.