In the office of the only candidate for attorney general, there are awards from the FBI – for the cases against Galevi, Barretta, fights with pedophiles and Internet fraud. And in front of him first is the defense of the concept, in January – a vote in the SJC
Three awards from the FBI and one plaque from the US service decorate the wall in the office of the I.F. chief prosecutor Borislav Sarafov.
He was nominated for the post on Thursday and if elected on January 16 next year, will hold it for the next 7 years. That’s the mandate of accuser #1.
The first award is from 2011 and is for his work on two cases. One against Angel Hristov and Plamen Galev, who became famous as the Galevi Brothers, and the second against the “Firm” of Zlatomir Ivanov – Zlatko Baretata. An important detail is that both investigations ended in guilty verdicts, although while waiting for a ruling by the Supreme Court, the Galevi Brothers managed to escape from Bulgaria.
The second prize is from 2022 and is for the detection of cybercrimes. While in charge of the National Investigation Service, he
creates the unit to combat the ever-increasing computer crime
Until then, there was such a unit only in GDBOP. The third is from this May. During the visit to the headquarters in Florida, Sarafov was honored by Director Christopher Wray for his personal contribution to the successful cooperation between the prosecutor’s office and the FBI in the fight against transnational organized crime. Then he managed to arrange training for Bulgarian investigators there, as well as for Americans to come here. The plaque is about the prosecution’s fight against pedophilia.
The wall behind Sarafov suggests overseas support. On June 26
he and American Ambassador Kenneth Merten stood side by side
at a press conference in the Conference Hall of the Court House to announce that Bulgaria is also initiating pre-trial proceedings against the crypto-queen Ruzha Ignatova. Until then, the businesswoman, who disappeared in 2017, was investigated in the US and Germany, but not in her homeland. Many interpreted Sarafov and Merten’s joint statement as more of a sign of support for acting prosecutor #1.
From now on, I can declare that if I am elected as the chief prosecutor of the Republic of Bulgaria, I will work daily and purposefully to restore the sense of justice in society, to enforce the principle of the rule of law, the political neutrality of the institution and the protection of the independence of the judiciary , announced Sarafov in a statement to BTA after being nominated.
And ambitiously added: I have a solution to all current problems in the prosecutor’s office.
What he thinks they are remains to be seen from his concept, which he has to present in the coming weeks, and from the answers to the questions he will be asked at the hearing.
Only a month ago, he ordered that cases against corruption, organized crime, domestic violence and accidents be considered more quickly and qualitatively. He demanded punishment for the prosecutor from the SGP, Dimitar Frantisek, who raised an unproven accusation against the producer Niko Tuparev, insisted on the dismissal of the military district prosecutor Adelbert Krastev because of many violations found after an inspection.
On February 1 this year one bullet mowed down Martin Bojanov-Notary, but also hit the judicial system. It turned out that the man, who was well known to many magistrates, also enjoyed their patronage.
On February 9, Sarafov, at the head of a team of 21 supreme prosecutors,
entered the Sofia District Prosecutor’s Office. A check showed that in 10 years there were 25 files related to the Notary. Sarafov twice demanded the resignation of the former district prosecutor of Sofia, Nevena Zartova. Once in August 2023, then because of the revelations about the Notary. Then, in addition to her, her deputies also resigned from their posts.
However, the biggest battle in the months since Sarafov has been at the head of the prosecutor’s office has been over changing the constitution. The changes voted by the people’s representatives had a purpose
to totally curtail the powers of the Attorney General
and to reduce him to the administrative head only of the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office. At the same time, the Prosecutor’s College, which is chaired by the chief prosecutor, was supposed to have only four members from the professional quota, and six members from the National Assembly. The criticisms of the class and the academic community were not heard by the MPs. The amendments went down in the Constitutional Court, but legality oversight was removed. Sarafov is the first prosecutor to whom the chief prosecutor’s investigation mechanism was applied.
The main issue that has been highlighted in recent weeks is that the mandate of the SJC expired two years ago.
“In this political instability, institutions cannot remain without leadership indefinitely. The danger is that for another year, two or three years, the parliament will not fill the parliamentary quota in the SJC, and accordingly it will not elect a chief prosecutor. So i.f. a chief prosecutor can end up with a term longer than that of a regularly elected one”, commented Dimitar Markov from the Center for the Study of Democracy to “24 Chasa”. According to him, there are no obstacles for this SJC to choose a chief prosecutor. “It is a problem that the council has an expired mandate, but this problem can remain for years,” he added.
By the way, Sarafov has been in a leadership position in the prosecutor’s office since 2011. He is the first head of the appellate special prosecutor’s office. Then he was a candidate for chief prosecutor, but the SJC chose Sotir Tsatsarov. He became his deputy and served the entire 7-year term. Tsatsarov proposed him as the director of the national investigation in 2017, the Prosecutorial Board unanimously elected him. Geshev proposed it in 2022 and they unanimously re-elected him again. How many votes he will collect now will be known on January 16.
A staff member who voted a year ago against being an I.F. Attorney General, filed his candidacy today
Three personnel from the Prosecutor’s College nominated Borislav Sarafov for the position of chief prosecutor on Thursday. One of them is Plamen Naydenov, former district prosecutor of Pernik, who a year ago was the only one who voted against Sarafov becoming the acting president. Attorney General. The other two who nominated the current accuser #1 were Stefan Petrov, who is the chairman of the panel, and Svetlana Boshnakova. No other proposals were made.
At least three members of the Prosecutorial College and the Minister of Justice have the right to nominate. Maria Pavlova explained that she did not take advantage of it because she did not have the right to vote.
The election will be on January 16 next year. With the recent changes to the Judiciary Act, at least 13 votes are needed. Until a year ago, 17 were needed. Sarafov’s nomination was made in the last of four possible sessions of the SJC Plenum and is not a particularly big surprise. Since June of last year, he has been the acting president, after Ivan Geshev was removed from the post. The PP-DB announced that they will refer the election to the Constitutional Court, but since they do not have the necessary 48 votes, they are looking for 9 more MPs to sign their request. However, it may not affect the course of the procedure. Until now, the practice of the personnel authority is to suspend a given case when there is a pending case in the Constitutional Court, but only after the request has been admitted for consideration. In order to do this, however, it is very important how the question to the Constitutional Court will be formulated.