At its Human Rights meeting from 15 to 17 September, the Committee of Ministers examined the case Kolevi v. Bulgaria, which concerns the lack of guarantees for the independence of criminal investigations concerning the Chief Prosecutor and other high-ranking officials close to him. It also examined the group of cases S.Z. v. Bulgaria, which concerns the systemic problem of ineffective criminal investigations and issues concerning investigation of sexual offences. The Committee warmly welcomed the overall progress achieved, demonstrating Bulgaria’s commitment to fully executing the Court’s judgments in these important rule-of-law cases.

As regards the effectiveness of investigations in general, recent legislative measures introduced automatic judicial review of the termination or suspension of investigations regarding certain corruption-related offences, as well as rules on separation of proceedings at the preliminary hearing of the trial stage. They also restored the courts’ competence to examine requests to accelerate investigations and introduced the right to file such requests before pre-trial charges.

As regards the independence of investigations concerning the Chief Prosecutor, the recent legislative measures introduced rules on simultaneous appointment of ad hoc prosector, responsible for the investigation of a Chief Prosecutor, and ad hoc controlling prosecutor, competent to review certain actions and decisions of the ad hoc prosecutor, give written instructions and take certain procedural steps instead of the ad hoc prosecutor. They also introduced automatic judicial review of all ad hoc prosecutor’s decisions to discontinue or suspend investigations and clear rules for reopening discontinued investigations.

 Country factsheet of Bulgaria