Bulgaria's Ruling Party Inches towards Anti-Mafia Tribunal

MP Iskra Fidosova (right) pictured with Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov. The anti-mafia tribunal project put forth by the ruling party GERB has come closer to realization. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's ruling center-right party GERB has come a step closer to the establishing a specialized court for organized crime and high-level corruption.

Late Wednesday night, the Justice Committee of the Bulgarian Parliament gave a green light to the project for amendments to the country's Penal Procedure Code tabled by the Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Group of the GERB Party, Iskra Fidosova, and backed by the signatures of 115 MPs.

According to the draft legislation, the future specialized tribunal will try corruption cases against magistrates, members of the Cabinet and the Supreme Judicial Council, district governors, mayors, and heads of the state agencies and commissions.

The anti-mafia court will also have jurisdiction over cases involving the abuse of EU funds, kidnappings, human trafficking, large-scale money laundering, and organized crime.

The draft amendments state to the Penal Procedure Code state that if a person has been charged with several crimes, and at least one of those falls under the jurisdiction of the special criminal court, all charges against the respective person will be considered by it.

The project for an anti-mafia tribunal was supported by 14 out of the 24 MPs in the Justice Committee; 10 others from the opposition Socialist Party and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms DPS voted against it.

The establishing of an anti-mafia court has been advertised widely by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov as a way to tackle the high-profile cases of corruption, abuses, and organized crime.

The promotion of this project has run parallel to Borisov and Tsvetanov's harsh criticism of Bulgaria's judicial system for its failure to reform and for issuing inadequate sentences suggesting corruption; this has led to a war of words between the Interior and the country's top judges.

Lawyers and the two major opposition parties have criticized severely the idea for a specialized anti-mafia court claiming that it would provide for violations of civil rights and for the establishment of a police state as the future court would be dominated by the executive.

The next step for the approval of the legislation amendments is a vote in the Parliament where the GERB party has 117 out of 240 MPs. It will most likely be supported in that motion by the nationalist party Ataka; its other ally, the rightist Blue Coalition has shown more reserve towards the special mafia court.

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