Both the election and the dismissal of Ivan Geshev confirm the suspicions of dependencies in the SJC and the Prosecutor’s Office, according to the Anti-Corruption Fund (ACF). They recalled that on 12 June the Plenum of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) established grounds for early dismissal of Ivan Geshev from the position of „Prosecutor General of the Republic of Bulgaria“ due to actions that undermine the prestige of the judiciary.
According to the ACF, this action shows the clear dependencies and ties of the SJC and the Prosecutor’s Office to the political situation in the country.
They recalled that the decision was preceded by a series of events in political life over the past month. On May 11, Maria Gabriel, nominated at that time for prime minister by GERB, publicly stated that the justice minister in a future government of hers would request the release of the Prosecutor General.
The next day, six members of the prosecutorial collegium of the SJC submitted a motion for early dismissal of the Prosecutor General on the grounds that in violation of procedural rules Geshev had personally ordered the participation of an Israeli expert in the examination of an explosion that occurred next to the car in which he was travelling on his usual route.
On June 8, during a session of the SJC, the six members of the prosecutor’s collegium withdrew their first proposal for early dismissal. Thus, in the 14-hour session, the SJC discussed only the second proposal concerning Ivan Geshev’s statement of 15 May On 12 June, after a 9-hour session of the SJC, this proposal was adopted.
The proposals for early dismissal of the Prosecutor General from May this year are not the first submitted for consideration by the SJC. The previous ones, although they were argued in detail, did not receive the attention of the SJC.
Back in the summer of 2021 Caretaker Minister of Justice Prof. Janaki Stoilov submitted such a proposal claiming that he had committed violations of the Code of Ethics of Magistrates, as well as that he had failed to fulfill his duties as administrative head of the prosecution. The violations then identified included: The disclosure of data from Special Intelligence Measures (SIS) applied in pre-trial proceedings; statements and comments indicating bias and prejudice and violating the presumption of innocence; the 9 July 2020 raid on the Presidency, in which the Prosecutor’s Office acted in a tendentious manner; the abuse of official duties and violation of the principle of separation of powers in carrying out searches and seizures in the Presidency building; and the violation of the principle of random allocation of cases in the Prosecutor’s Office.
In March 2022, Justice Minister Nadezhda Yordanova submitted a new proposal for the early termination of Geshev’s mandate for damaging the prestige of the judiciary, motivated by 9 cases: The case of „The Eight Dwarfs“; the case of police violence during the protests in the summer of 2020; the request for lifting the immunity of Yelena Yoncheva; the publicly expressed suspicion of the Prosecutor General about possible manipulation of the system for random distribution of cases in the courts; the case against Evgeniya and Nikolay Banev; the Zhossi affair; the disrespectful, derisive and hostile attitude towards NGOs, individuals and legal communities expressing opinions; the Gebrev case and the seizure of cars for the purposes of investigating accidents.
On July 7 last year, the proposals of the two justice ministers were considered by the SJC and after a 13-hour debate they were rejected with the argument that there were no circumstances for the early dismissal of Ivan Geshev.
The circumstances of the election, the refusal of dismissal last year and the subsequent late dismissal of Ivan Geshev give clear indications of the existence of dependencies and ties of the Supreme Judicial Council and the Prosecutor’s Office with the political conjuncture in the country.
Under the leadership of Ivan Geshev for more than three years the Prosecutor’s Office did not conduct a single successful prosecution, despite the existence of sufficient evidence of possible crimes committed by politicians holding senior management positions in political parties. The prosecution surprisingly announced the resumption of investigations in several important criminal proceedings only when the planned early dismissal of the Prosecutor General became public.
The ACF believes that the belated dismissal of the Prosecutor General cannot be a substitute for deep judicial reform and the establishment of a truly independent judiciary.
„There needs to be a broad discussion on how to form a Supreme Judicial Council that can make impartial decisions based on high professionalism and the rule of law and not on undue external influence.“
According to them, replacing Ivan Geshev with another Prosecutor General will only make sense if the independence of the Supreme Judicial Council as the body responsible for the personnel policy in the judiciary is guaranteed so that the judiciary is truly independent from the will of one or another political force.
