Bulgarian Parliament has started discussions on the annual report of the Bulgarian Prosecutor's Office, filed by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) and representing an overview of the implementation of the law on prosecution and investigative authorities in 2006, Dnevnik daily reported on November 1.

Parliamentary debate will take place in the attendance of Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva, the Chief Prosecutor Boris Velchev and members of the SJC.
According to the opinion of the legal committee on the prosecutor's office report, the prosecutor's office has logged more than 430 000 reports, a 15 per cent increase against the year before. About 90 per cent of the cases have been closed before the year's end and a quarter of the logs did not reach the pre-trial investigation stage.

There were 230 000 pre-trial investigations last year. About 70 per cent of the cases were opened under the new Penal Procedural Code (PPC) and the newly-opened felony cases were 10 per cent more compared to 2005.

Pre-trial investigators have closed 17.5 per cent more cases compared to 2005, whereas investigators have finalised fewer cases, the legal committee says in its report. The number of completed investigations against organised crime groups rose by 5.2 per cent, for drug trafficking - by 40 per cent and for tax crimes by 70 per cent.

The number of yet-to-be-closed has gone down by 27 per cent.