SOFIA – The Bulgarian government proposed a Bill yesterday authorising widespread confiscation of illegally obtained assets in a bid to crack down on powerful organised crime and corruption.
Justice minister Margarita Popova said the Bill was a key weapon for the new centre-right government, which won elections in July, to fight crime and avoid penalties being imposed by the European Union.
Failure to demonstrate results by July next year, when Brussels is due to assess the progress of its poorest member state, could threaten Bulgaria’s access to €11 billion in aid promised to it up until 2013.
“With this Bill the government proves its explicit will to fight corruption and . . . we can respond to the criticism by the European Union that Bulgaria must tackle the problems with so-called unexplained wealth,” Ms Popova told a news conference.
The new legislation, backed by the government but yet to be formally approved and sent to parliament, will replace an existing law on confiscation of illegally obtained assets which has been widely criticised for being too soft and ineffective.
The European Union, which last year froze millions in aid to Sofia over fraud, has said conditions for asset-freezing were too restrictive and did not match the reality of crime in Bulgaria.
Under the current law, an anti-crime commission can freeze the assets of people when prosecutors are investigating them for a wide range of crimes and confiscate the assets only if the suspects are convicted.
The new Bill will allow the commission to launch its own investigations and confiscate assets of people who cannot explain their sources of income in court, even if the suspects are not convicted at all.
Investigations will be launched when the discrepancy between the sources of income and property exceeds 60,000 levs (€30,718).
“The proposed changes are very serious, very tough . . . and aim to meet public expectations,” said Rosen Kozhuharov, a justice ministry expert who helped prepare the Bill.
The anti-crime commission has confiscated only 1 million levs (€511,000) worth of illegal assets since the law was adopted in 2005. Officials at the commission had blamed the weak political will of the previous Socialist-led government and sluggish court procedures for failing to convict criminals, and so seize their assets outright.
Bulgaria has so far failed to convict a single senior official of corruption and has sent to jail only one crime boss since communism collapsed in 1989. But the new cabinet has taken a harder line since taking office in July.
Former premier Sergei Stanishev has been accused of losing classified reports on crime, while other former ministers have been charged with embezzlement and abuse of power. – (Reuters)