Cassation Court Chief Urges President to Set Up a Committee on TZUM-gate Case

The Chairperson of Bulgaria’s Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC), Lozan Panov urged President Roumen Radev to set up a committee which will look into the TZUM-gate scandal.

In a letter, sent to the Presidential Institution on 15^th of May, Panov says he believes that Radev's intervention is necessesary, "because in the present situation you could prevent the devaluation of trust in the entire institutional system of the state" and because the President signs the decree appointing the Chief Prosecutor, the letter reads.

“If this event was to be left without legal consequences, it would seriously undermine the confidence of the Bulgarian public in the judicial system, and in front of our European Union partners, our country may face an image crisis with long-term consequences, “ Panov says.

“The Chief Prosecutor is the ultimate guarantor for supervising the compliance with the laws of the Republic of Bulgaria and his refusal to answer to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) in connection with his unregulated meeting and the absence of any institutional response casts reasonable doubt about the existence of a rule of law,” writes Panov.

"When we have unregulated contacts of a Chief Prosecutor with businessmen who are subject to preliminary prosecution checks and who have political positions on the eve of the elections, it is a gross violation of the law. Even in the critically few Bulgarian citizens who still trust the Bulgarian judicial sytem, this gave rise to the feeling that the activities of the Prosecutor's Office for inttiating criminal prosecution and supervision of legality is determined not by the merits in the law, but by personal contacts, opaque influence and corruption practices. The actions of the Chief Prosecutor give rise to well-founded suspicions of a deficit, and why not to a lack of rule of law and undoubtedly, this will lead to the delegitimisation of a key state institution, such as the Prosecution Office. Furthermore, after the meeting was disclosed by one of the participants in it, the follow-up actions by the prosecutor's office and the unexplained truth about the conversation, has led to the occurrence of reasonable doubts in the public about the existence of a risk, that the person who complained about misuse of power, may become subject to retaliatory revenge," the letter reads.

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