site.btaUPDATED Provisions on Speedier Pre-Trial Phase Amended Conclusively

Bulgaria's Parliament on Wednesday passed conclusively revisions to the Criminal Procedure Code concerning the possibility to accelerate pre-trial proceedings.

The victim or the victim's heirs and the prejudiced legal person may move for an acceleration of the investigation if more than one year has lapsed since the institution of the pre-trial proceedings and no person has been constituted as an accused party, the amendments provide.

The motion for speeding up the pre-trial phase has to be addressed to the administrative head of the competent prosecution office, who will have one month to decide on it. New motions may be made after the expiry of a six-month period from the prosecutor's decision, the MPs resolved.

Any motions for an acceleration of the investigation made by the effective date of the revisions will be examined according to the new procedure, according to the amending law.

During the debate, Stoyu Stoev MP of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) objected that the authority ruling on the motion to speed up the pre-trial proceedings is being changed from the court to the prosecution office as a technical edit even though it is an amendment in substance.

Parliament also legislated that duplicate copies of the warrant terminating criminal proceedings will be sent to the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Commission for Illegal Assets Forfeiture, the Public Financial Inspection Agency (PFIA) and the Bulgarian National Audit Office (BNAO), where these bodies have reported the criminal offence committed. A termination warrant will be appealable before the competent first-instance court within seven days of receipt of the duplicate copy.

The revisions formulate explicit grounds on which the prosecutor general may reverse a warrant terminating criminal proceedings.

In view of the 2015 demilitarization of State Intelligence Agency personnel, the amending law provides that military courts will no longer take cognizance of cases of criminal offences committed by such personnel. 

Pending criminal cases whose cognizance is altered by this law will be examined by the courts before which they have been instituted. Unfinished pre-trial proceedings will be completed by the authorities before which they are pending.

Opposition Proposals Turned Down

Also on Wednesday, the National Assembly rejected on first reading four bills revising the Criminal Procedure Code moved by MPs of CC-DB.

The amendments proposed by Yavor Bozhankov would "limit the adverse impact of false positive results of field tests for use of narcotic drugs" because their consequences affect directly citizens' rights, according to the report of the parliamentary Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. The votes in favour of this bill were 1 from GERB-UDF, 31 from CC-DB, 17 from There Is Such a People and 2 from the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF).

Three other pieces of draft legislation, tabled by Bozhidar Bozhanov and Nadejda Iordanova, would make publicly available, with a six-month delay, certain prosecutorial warrants and the reports of the PFIA and the BNAO "lest the secrecy of investigation be used to violate the presumption of innocence". "All three bills seek to curb abuses in the pre-trial phase. Abuses by the prosecution and the investigating authorities are undoubtedly endemic," Bozhanov argued, presenting the proposed amendments. When put to the vote, they were supported by MPs of CC-DB, Vazrazhdane, ARF and MECh.