site.btaUPDATED Removal of National Audit Office Chair Tzvetkov Declared Unconstitutional

The Constitutional Court has unanimously declared unconstitutional a decision by the previous parliament to remove Tzvetan Tzvetkov, the Chair of the National Audit Office. The court decision is published on the court website.

Tsvetkov was dismissed in January 2023.

The reasons for the court decision have not been published yet.

Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) held a news briefing in Parliament shortly after the Constitutional Court ruling was announced, to declare their satisfaction. They were the ones who challenged the constitutionality of Tzvetkov's removal.

CC-DB MP Nikola Minchev recalled that a bill to dismiss Tzvetkov had been submitted by 4 parliamentary groups without motives. On the one hand, they claimed that Tzvetkov's mandate had expired, at the same time one of his deputies, who also had an expired mandate, was elected as interim governor.

In view of this, we can congratulate ourselves that the independence of the National Audit Office is protected and after the promulgation in the State Gazette of the decision of the Constitutional Court, Tzvetkov will continue to serve as Chair of the National Audit Office until another one is elected by Parliament, Minchev said.

In the words of CC-DB MP Martin Dimitrov , during Tzvetkov's presidency the Audit Office made the most serious checks in recent years in Bulgaria - the highways, hence the inhouse procurements, for the dams that hundreds of millions of leva were spent and only a few were repaired. According to Dimitrov, after these huge checks with critical results, the Chair of the Audit Office was replaced in an illegitimate and illegal way. To have strong control bodies and regulators should be the main objective of the National Assembly, the MP is convinced. "And notice, the change was made in this body, which works, which has caught bad practices for hundreds of millions of damage to the budget. Measures are not taken where the regulators, the control bodies are not working," he said.

Dimitrov drew attention to the fact that the last 5 months there has been a delay in the audits, and two are waiting with great interest - the Bulgarian Post and the Deposit Guarantee Fund. "We do not understand why the current management is delaying the final reports," he said.

The MP explained that CC-DB had not discussed names for a new Bulgarian National Bank governor. The Commission on Protection of Competition, according to him, is a very inefficient body. According to Dimitrov, there should be a serious internal debate and then the replacement procedure should start.