Parliament Supports in Principle New Bill against High-Level Corruption

Sofia, June 30 (BTA) - Parliament voted on principle on Thursday to support a Bill on Prevention of Corruption and Forfeiture of Unlawful Assets. The government's bill was supported by 130 votes out of the 171 attending MPs. 28 voted against and 13 abstained.

It passed on principle on the votes of 72 votes from GERB, 20 of the Reformist Bloc, 13 of the Patriotic Front, 10 of the Bulgarian Democratic Centre - Popular Union and two independents. The votes "against" included 21 from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) - Left Bulgaria, six from the nationalist Ataka and one independent. The abstainees were from ABV (8), BSP-Left Bulgaria (3), the Patriotic Front (1) and an independent.

Having headed the team preparing the law and campaigning extensively to lobby support for it in the legislature, Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva said that the bill's key feature is the consolidation of the existing anti-corruption bodies into an independent single authority, a national bureau for corruption prevention and forfeiture of criminal assets. The bill also sets out a new procedure for criminal assets forfeiture.

The future bureau will take over the functions of four now existing bodies: the commission for prevention and ascertainment of conflict of interest, the commission for forfeiture of illegally acquired assets, the centre for prevention and countering corruption and organized crime and units of the National Audit Office which are now responsible for verifying the property declarations of public officials. The new bureau will have a director with four deputies, all of them to be elected by Parliament.

As she addressed the MPs, Kuneva stressed the need to have a strong and independent bureau that will report to Parliament and the Bulgarian people. She suggested that a work group of deputies and experts be set up between the initial and final voting to propose legal safeguards for the independence of the bureau.

The bill broadens the scope of officials whose property declarations will be subject to verification by the bureau as well as the scope of persons required to submit property declarations, and sets out new rules for verifying the property and conflict of interest declarations of magistrates.

The bill provides an opportunity for intiating a probe based on media publications.

Kuneva admitted that the provisions allowing probes after anonymous alerts has been the most divisive. "We heard fears of abuses [of these provisions]. Let's discuss them and see what is best to prevent these," she told the deputies.

Also, the bill increases the powers for forfeiture of unlawfully acquired assets in a bid to overcome the hurdles in enforcement of the civil asset forfeiture.

"We have an opportunity to broaden accord because we have a common problem we need to address," Kuneva said.

An earlier version of Kuneva's team was turned down by Parliament on first reading last year. The revised version was supported by the legal committee of the legislature after the authors made a commitment to reconsider the controversial provisions before the conclusive vote.