Supreme Judicial Council postponed debate on proposal for early dismissal of Prosecutor General

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) postponed the substantive debate on the proposal of Justice Minister Nadezhda Yordanova for the early dismissal of Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev.

The Council has received a decision of the Supreme Administrative Court which is to discuss the proposal for termination of Geshev's powers, submitted by the former caretaker Justice Minister, prof. Yanaki Stoilov.

The two proposals for the early dismissal of Ivan Geshev from the post will be united in one discussion. According to the SJC, however, the proposal of Yanaki Stoilov is incomplete - there are no specific facts and circumstances to justify the allegations of chief prosecutor's systematic failure to perform his duties, undermining the prestige of the judiciary or exceeding his powers. Therefore, the SJC instructed the Minister of Justice to supplement Stoilov's proposal within 7 days by indicating specific facts and circumstances.

On 4 May, the SJC will consider Yanaki Stoilov's proposal on admissibility, after which it will discuss both proposals for early termination of the powers of Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev.

Justice Minister Nadezhda Yordanova commented that she will complete Yanaki Stoilov's proposal within 7 days and will support it. She believes that the procedure will be completed by the end of May.

A majority of at least 17 votes among members of the Supreme Judicial Council is required to for removal of Ivan Geshev from the post of Prosecutor General.

At today's meeting, SJC members demanded an apology from Minister Yordanova for claiming that they owe their careers to Ivan Geshev. In a televised interview, she expressed doubt that the SJC could dismiss the Prosecutor General because, in her words, members of the SJC owe their careers to Ivan Geshev.

However, many members of the SJC stressed that they had met Geshev long after their careers had started and asked Nadezhda Yordanova for an apology or specific arguments on how they owed their careers to him.

Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev also commented on Nadezhda Yordanova's allegations before the start of the SJC meeting.

"I understood that the Prosecutor’s Office is centralized. I understood that the Prosecutor's Office, not the Ministry of Interior, detects crimes. I found out that the Prosecutor's Office runs the judicial investigation, not the court. If it wasn't funny, it would have been be sad. For the sake of Bulgarian statehood or whatever is left of it, I hope that the Minister of Justice, instead of going around TV studios and making false statements of an overtly political nature, would make these statements in the Plenum of the SJC, where the place for such statements is," Ivan Geshev said.

"If there are false data, please identify them and point them out. The fact that the Minister of Justice uses the opportunities provided by the media to explain her work I think is within the ministerial powers. It is high time Bulgaria has the Prosecutor General we owe the public. One who shares and upholds high moral standards, and defends human rights without violating them, a Prosecutor General who does not hide behind police violence,” Justice Minister Nadezhda Yordanova said, answering a question what the replacement of Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev would resolve.

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