site.btaParliament Votes to Close Anti-Corruption Commission

Parliament Wednesday has adopted at second reading a bill amending the National Audit Office Act, which provides for the closure of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), with its functions being transferred to the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (GDCOC) at the Ministry of Interior and to the National Audit Office.

The functions related to detecting and counteracting corruption are assigned to GDCOC, while the investigation of high-level corruption cases is once again entrusted to investigating magistrates. Activities related to corruption prevention, the identification of conflicts of interest, and the establishment of discrepancies in the declared assets of persons holding public office are transferred to the National Audit Office, which becomes the legal successor to the administrative structures of the ACC performing these functions.

Employees of the ACC's Specialized Directorate for Counteracting Corruption will be transferred to GDCOC without a probationary period, except for those who are currently serving a probationary period.

Parliament also finally decided that the ACC will hand over to the State Agency for National Security (SANS) all archived operational files, as well as the remaining databases held by the ACC containing information related to these files. The initial proposal was that these databases be immediately destroyed, but Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee adopted an amended version of the texts, which was also supported in the plenary hall.

Proposals by Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and Vazrazhdane that all archived operational files and the related data be transferred to GDCOC instead of SANS were rejected.