The election of members of the new Anti-Corruption Commission has raised serious questions not only in political circles, but also in the Bulgarian bar. The procedure by which the Supreme Bar Council nominated its candidate has been carried out without the necessary transparency and without real discussion by authoritative lawyers with proven professional and international experience. What is happening… Lawyer Alexander Kashumov speaks to FACTI.
– Lawyer Kashumov, an interesting case arose around the Supreme Bar Council and the people who were nominated by it as members of the new Anti-Corruption Commission. What exactly is this about?
– What happened is a consequence of the legislative changes adopted after the closure of the commission in the previous mandate of the National Assembly, dominated by GERB and MRF. Now such a commission will be created again, and one of its members must be elected upon a proposal from the Supreme Bar Council. However, the procedure itself was completely opaque. In practice, the selection was reduced to two young colleagues. We all support young people, but when it comes to such a responsible position, serious professional experience, knowledge and a broad outlook are required.
There are nearly 14 thousand lawyers in the Bulgarian bar, among whom are personalities of European renown. We have former judges at the European Court of Human Rights who are today lawyers - such as Yonko Grozev and Zdravka Kalaidzhieva. We also have other lawyers with enormous international authority, such as attorney Mihail Ekimdjiev, who has made an exceptional contribution to cases in Strasbourg, and many other worthy names. We did not see any of them discussed. Instead, the choice fell on a candidate who explicitly admitted that he did not have the necessary experience, which is puzzling.
– Did anyone explain how these nominations were made, or were they simply dropped?
– The procedure for selecting members of the commission was launched, but how exactly the nominations themselves arose – no one knows. There is no publicity about this issue in the bar. I personally have no idea how these candidates appeared.
I do not understand why the Supreme Bar Council has decided to act as a closed group, reminiscent of the rule of the “thirty tyrants“ in Ancient Greece. The task of the Supreme Bar Council is not to rule alone, but to consult with lawyers, listen to them and organize an open procedure. We can give an example of the election of a member of the Commission for Combating Corruption by the General Assembly of Judges from the Criminal, Civil and Commercial Chambers of the Supreme Court of Cassation, where such a procedure was held publicly and transparently. Here too, there should have been a broad search for nominations through the bar associations in the country, with real participation of the legal community. Nothing like this happened.
– Why, how do you explain it?
– Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. If it were, it would not have been so important. This is another example of an ongoing policy of the majority in the Supreme Bar Council, which in a strange way, through connections and backstage agreements, manages the bar. In the previous term, employees were also dismissed without public discussion, positions were exchanged and personnel decisions were made without transparency. This is already becoming a permanent trend.
– Some time ago, there were serious disputes and questions about the spending of funds in the Bar. How are things today?
– Money should be managed much more transparently. Often, proposals for allocating funds appear literally the day before the meetings. As a reserve member in the previous mandate, I have seen how funds are allocated for certain initiatives - concerts by ensembles, while at the same time support is denied for student competitions on the protection of human rights, for example. This is not a problem only of the current majority - it has existed for years. But that is precisely why we need to move towards much greater transparency. Currently, the Supreme Bar Council does not hold public debates on the way in which funds are spent. Decisions are made without sufficient reasons, and discussions on them remain hidden.
– Is that why a kind of happening was organized in front of the Supreme Bar Council a few days ago, with cardboard figures without heads?
– This was a form of civic and artistic provocation, through which important questions were raised. The artistic idea of the authors, as I understand it, is to illustrate that the members of today's VAdvS are more interested in carrying out like straw dolls the commands of a figure behind the scenes, who has placed them with controversial methods, than in serving the general interest of the bar. Many problems have accumulated and they must begin to be discussed openly. Let us not forget the experience from a few years ago, when the same majority tried to purchase a building for millions of levs and bind the bar to a long-term mortgage. This was also an extremely serious case.
– It was about a long-term mortgage…
– Yes, this was a very big case. In the end, everything ended quietly because they failed to gather the necessary majority. The tension then reached very high levels, but this case showed some of the serious problems in the management of the bar. Another similar case is the case challenging the legality of the election of this majority in the Supreme Bar Council. Although the appeal was rejected, for the first time it was supported by so many colleagues such as Ivan Dermendzhiev (former chairman of the Bar Council), lawyer Ina Lucheva, respected colleagues from Varna, Plovdiv and other cities. The Supreme Court of Cassation clearly indicated in its reasoning that the practices observed during the elections were absolutely unacceptable. However, the court accepted that the current legislation did not give it sufficient powers to intervene in a way that would influence the outcome of the election. I mention all this because, in my opinion, if there is no radical change, if all the problems in the legal profession are not brought to the forefront, if disciplinary proceedings are not analyzed, if we do not see what happens with violations, whether certain colleagues go unpunished or not, as well as many other issues, this majority must leave. A very serious feeling of intolerance is already building up among lawyers.