Second request for the removal of the chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev was submitted to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). This time, however, it was signed not by six, but by four people from the prosecutor’s collegium. These are Kalina Chapkanova, Yordan Stoev, Georgi Kuzmanov and Gergana Mutafova.
The request appears a day after Geshev gave a press conference where he released a recording of his conversation with Stoev. In it, the Attorney General misleads him that he is ready to resign and demands guarantees for himself and his family. Stoev explains that he will hand it over to whomever he needs and the guarantees will be given. The two also discuss the suddenly formed organization against Geshev in the council. Last week, Stoev commented that he was shocked that Geshev recorded the conversation. However, the Attorney General claims that he is not its author and says that the file was passed on a flash drive to a female employee near the Courthouse.
The other important event preceding the second request was the agreement between GERB and PP-DB to form a government. It was announced on Monday.
Unlike the first request, the signatures of Ognyan Damyanov (nominated by United Patriots) and Svetlana Boshnakova (nominated by the BSP) are missing in the present one. From the Geshev-Stoev conversation, it is understood that Damyanov reluctantly signed the first request, and Boshnakova was in “Pirogov” for treatment, where the documents were taken to her.
Why does he insult politicians?
This time, the reason for requesting Geshev’s removal is his statement about the “political garbage” that needs to be swept away. These were the words spoken by the attorney general last Monday when he dramatically pulled out of his resignation and announced he was staying on.
According to the four, he and Geshev violated the magistrates’ code of ethics. They write that with his words, the chief prosecutor demonstrated “clear disrespect for the political system in the country and its functioning”. The statement is also said to have scandalized the entire society. Geshev’s vocabulary, intonation and gestures are perceived as “stupid and obscene”, the four say, citing a statement by the co-chairman of “Democratic Bulgaria” Hristo Ivanov. A statement by GERB deputy Toma Bykov to the website “Epicenter” was quoted, the title of which is “It is good for us that “Barcelonagate” is looked at by another chief prosecutor”.
“Others assume that these threats of “political garbage” speak to the fact that these cases are deliberately kept on the rocks, and that the prosecutor’s office is thus directly involved in politics. Behind the deputies in the National Assembly are 3,000,000 people who directly elected them, and they cannot be told that they are “garbage“, the four write in the request.
Stand up forest of prosecutors!
And while the opponents of the chief prosecutor in the SJC are decreasing, the support of “labor collectives” is increasing in places. After the Sofia prosecutors, those from the appeal district of Plovdiv spoke in his defense. Declarations were also uploaded to the websites of the prosecutor’s offices in Vidin and Stara Zagora.
They are in response to a statement published on the website of the appellate prosecutor’s office in Sofia. It was uploaded at the first request to remove Geshev. The chief prosecutor then explained that his deputy and head of the national investigation Borislav Sarafov put pressure on the appellate prosecutor Radoslav Dimov to publish it. Dimov wrote to Geshev to apologize for what he had done.
According to Geshev, Sarafov also called the other four appeal districts, but was refused everywhere. All the prosecutors from Burgas, Plovdiv, Varna and Tarnovo were on the side of the principal. A few days ago, a “counter-declaration” appeared on the website of the appellate prosecutor’s office in Sofia, already in support of Geshev.
2023-05-23 08:25:09
#Geshevs #enemies #SCC #action #reduced #composition #Mediapool.bg
