Government proposes special agency to investigate the upper echelons of power

The government approved the establishment of a commission to investigate the upper echelons of power, caretaker Justice Minister, Krum Zarkov, announced at a briefing at the Council of Ministers on October 26.

The establishment of the investigative body is included in the draft law on combating corruption among persons in high public office. In the BNT breakfast programme this morning, Krum Zarkov announced details of the work of the new agency. The idea is that the future agency should take over some of the functions of the anti-corruption commission ( Counter-corruption and Unlawfully Acquired Assets Forfeiture Commission). The new agency should be headed by a rotating president to ensure that if one president turns a blind eye on some case files, the next president will check them out, Zarkov explained.

"We have created guarantees that this body is neither a bat nor an umbrella," he assured.

The commission will be headed by a board of five people with a five-year term, who will rotate the chairmanship for a year at a time. Two of them will be nominated by the National Assembly, one by the President and one each by the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court.

If the Prosecutor's Office refuses to open an investigation into the agency’s probe, it will have the right to appeal to the courts.

The changes in the law are also related to the second payment under the Recovery and Resilience Plan.

The caretaker government approved two more bills related to the Plan - to introduce electronic batches for properties as a basic prerequisite for the creation of a property registry and to make court mediation mandatory in most disputes related to family relationships, partitions, and condominiums.