FORMER SOFIA CITY COURT CHIEF DEMOTED FOR THREE YEARS

Bulgaria’s Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) demoted the former Chairperson of Sofia City Court, Vladimira Yaneva, for three years. In practice, this penalty results in decrease of the magistrate’s salary. Currently, Yaneva is a judge in the Supreme Cassation Court and Supreme Administrative Court. Another proposal was to demote Yaneva to a rank of a judge from a regional court but only 4 members of the SJC voted in favour of the proposal. One of the mebers of the disciplinary hearing proposed a disciplinary dismissal.

The disciplinary procedure against Yaneva was launched at the proposal of the former Minister of Justice, Hristo Ivanov and the Chairperson of the Supreme Cassation Court, Lozan Panov, following a check which showed non-compliance with the principle of random distribution of court cases and poor organization of the work in Sofia city court while she was the chair.

Currently, Vladimira Yaneva is suspended from work because she is a defendant in a court case in connection with operation “Worm”. On 15th of January, Yaneva, was imposed 1 year suspended sentence.