The Chief Prosecutor Borislav Sarafov submitted a proposal to the Prosecutor's College of the Supreme Judicial Council to initiate disciplinary proceedings for the imposition of a disciplinary penalty of “dismissal from office as administrative head“ of the district prosecutor of the District Prosecutor's Office-Pleven Vladimir Nikolov.
The proposal was prepared based on a report from a planned thematic audit of the work on the organization, management and control of the activities of the District Prosecutor's Office-Pleven in the period 01.07.2023 - 31.12.2024, carried out by prosecutors from the “Inspectorate“ department at the Supreme Cassation Prosecutor's Office.
The proposal to initiate disciplinary proceedings is in connection with disciplinary violations committed in the period from 01.07.2023 to 01.07.2024 under Art. 307, para. 3, item 4 of the Judicial System Act (JSA) and disciplinary violations committed in the period from 01.07.2023 to 31.12.2024 under Art. 307, para. 5, item 1 of the JSA.
The audit has established that Vladimir Nikolov, with a series of his orders, systematically violated the principle of random selection in the distribution of files and pre-trial proceedings in the prosecutor's office he led, and in 40 cases he did not comply with the acts in force in the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Bulgaria, related to the regulation in Art. 9, para. 1 of the JSA principle of random selection. Compliance with this principle is a key point for guaranteeing the impartiality of magistrates, establishing the principle of the rule of law and combating corruption in order to prevent the allocation of specific cases to a previously known magistrate.
During the thematic audit, 67 more files were identified, allocated by Vladimir Nikolov in his capacity as administrative head of the Pleven District Prosecutor's Office in the hypothesis of a specific choice. In most of them, it is not clear on what principle a given file was allocated exactly to the team member specified in the protocol for a specific choice. In each of the listed files, an incorrect application of the hypothesis of a specific choice was found, as they should have been allocated on the principle of random selection.
The thematic audit of Vladimir Nikolov also established that in his capacity as administrative head of the Pleven District Prosecutor's Office, he committed another violation of the JSA. He did not carry out the control imposed by the legislator for compliance with the deadlines for procedural coercion measures under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) and as a result, a violation was committed with respect to accused persons in six pre-trial proceedings. In some of the cases, the investigation period was repeatedly extended by both him and his various deputies, and various shortcomings were found in the decrees for extending the period - on the basis of Art. 234, para. 6 of the CCP, an already revoked detention measure is confirmed; a detention measure with an expired term is confirmed, and in individual cases without specifying its type; there is no ruling upon clarification in the request of the supervising prosecutor that such a measure has been taken.
In view of the findings of the inspection of the “Inspectorate“ department, containing 17 pages, i.f. Chief Prosecutor Borislav Sarafov proposes to the Prosecutorial College of the SJC to initiate disciplinary proceedings to impose a disciplinary penalty on Vladimir Nikolov under the Judiciary Act for the violations he committed, as well as for failure to fulfill his official duties as administrative head of the Pleven District Prosecutor's Office.
This is the next proposal by the acting chief prosecutor to the Prosecutorial College of the SJC in the past two years regarding administrative heads of the prosecutor's office system, as the “Inspectorate“ department continues to carry out inspections according to the approved plan for regular inspections of the work of individual prosecutor's offices in the country.