Bulgaria’s Prosecutor-General Boris Velchev, presenting his annual report to Parliament on September 16 2009 on the performance of prosecutors, called for sweeping reforms to make prosecutions more effective.
 
Velchev hit out at the work of Bulgaria’s numerous state supervisory bodies, saying that their work was inadequate and that they were the source of an insignificant number of reports of crimes.
 
A new system for managing the work of prosecutors would build confidence in prosecutors, Velchev told Parliament.
 
He said that the Criminal Code should be redrafted to clarify several areas about which there was vagueness about the definition and seriousness of crimes and accountability for them, and said that the punishments for crimes should be revised.
 
The figures for 2008 for prosecution of crimes involving abuse of public funds was "absurdly low," Velchev said.
 
He told Parliament that the number of indictments in connection to abuse of European Union funds had tripled and the number of pre-trial investigations about crimes involving EU funds had quadrupled.
 
In 2007, organised crime charges had added up to 72, with 80 people sentenced, while in 2008 this had increased to 173, Velchev said.
 
In 2008, most crimes reported involved offences against private property, adding up to just less than 62 per cent of the total, he said. Less than 0.5 per cent of the crime reported had been handed to prosecutors as a result of work by supervisory bodies, according to Velchev.