A new body will be fighting corruption as of 1, January, 2016 at the latest. It will bring under one roof the structures of the Centre for Prevention and Countering Corruption and Organized Crime, the Bulgarian National Audit Office, the Commission for the Prevention and Ascertainment of Conflict of Interest and the Commission for Illegal Assets Forfeiture. The new anti-corruption authority will inspect the assets of high level officials and look out for possible conflicts of interest. This is what the new Strategy for Preventing and Countering Corruption 2015-2020 aims at. The document was presented by Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva and Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov.

One more body is being set up – the National Anti-Corruption Policy Council which will have a citizens’ council to broker contacts between the public and the administration. A Deputy Prime Minister will be selected to act as national anti-corruption coordinator. The legislation concerning access to banking secrecy and wealth declarations will be amended.  Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva comments on one of the key questions – how the work of the new structures will be monitored.

“There will be a detailed mechanism of accountability, monitoring and evaluation, including independent external evaluation. We shall insist that this evaluation of how the anti-corruption institutions have been doing their job take place on an annual basis, so as to make absolutely sure that all dependencies, all vacillations have been avoided, that there won’t be telephone calls attempting to steer the work of any of the independent Bulgarian institutions.”

The Strategy reaches the year 2020 and its principal aims are: To make Bulgaria a country where petty corruption is cut down substantially to the average levels in Europe; to prevent corruption in the corridors of power from going unpunished, to ensure that the anti-corruption institutions work efficiently and have a tangible preventive effect on corruption so that the sense and the experience people and companies have as regards the level of corruption be reduced drastically.

The new structure’s top priority will be to monitor 7,670 individuals occupying top posts in the administration. In the words of Meglena Kuneva, this will mean a radical change of the system:

“If there are obvious signs that there is more corruption pressure in a given sphere or heightened public interest, we must channel all of our efforts in that given sphere if we want results and quickly. If we see that the institutions are wasting their time on things that are of minor importance or if they are misplacing their priorities, it can well be said that this is the wrong direction and we shall have to rectify our efforts. I am expecting the Ombudsman and the National Audit Office, all bodies whose job is accountability and monitoring in the country, to make their contribution so that the policy of changing the system may be successful.”

Citizens who have alerted the authorities of instances of corruption that have led to convictions will most probably receive a percentage of the sum involved. There is such a practice in Romania, for example. Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov comments on the legislative framework:

“At this point we have no plans of amending or reconsidering the statutes of limitation. Personally, I’d say that we should limit ourselves to this framework and curb our aptitude to have a special legislation.”

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Rumyana Buchvarova expressed serious skepticism regarding this new body, adding that no serious results are to be expected of its work.

English version: Milena Daynova