Rashkov’s List: Judges with Accounts and Properties Abroad

A list of names of magistrates who have not declared accounts and properties abroad has long attracted media attention after former Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov threatened to make it public. This never happened after the prosecutor’s office wagged a finger at him that he would disclose classified information from the State Agency for National Security. Two years later, BIRD and Bivol received the list, checked it and began publishing the names in it.

In the first part of a series of publications, we present the names of the judges. The most prominent among them is Boyan Magdalinchev, a current member of the SJC, but there are other administrative heads of courts who are less known to the public.

Our inspection found that the inclusion of some of the magistrates in this list is not always due to undeclared accounts and properties. This raises serious questions about blackmail and dependencies in the judiciary during the time of the Prosecutors General Sotir Tsatsarov and Ivan Geshev.

Who makes lists, when and for whom?

Boyko Rashkov began to speak insistently in the media about the list in question in the summer of 2021. Reportedthat an investigation commissioned by the Supreme Cassation Prosecutor’s Office for 27 judges, prosecutors and investigators и 11 people in senior public positions
/a total of 38 persons/. Впоследствие и прокуратурата излезе с
press release that “there are no violations of the tax and social security legislation by the inspected persons”, but also warned that “the data from the reports of the State Agency for National Security, on which the inspections of the National Revenue Agency, the Commission for Combating Corruption and the State Prosecution have been carried out are classified information and its disclosure is a crime”.

Thus, it became clear that there is a list, its source is the State Agency for National Security, the probe of the Prosecutor’s Office began at Sotir Tsatsarov as Prosecutor General in 2019, but it is likely that the list was prepared before that. The magistrates are 27 in number – 17 referees, 5 Prosecutors и 5 Investigators, politicians are 11 per piece, and no violations were found.

In the list we have there are not 27, but 28 names of magistrates, as well as an additional list of 7 more names of magistrates entitled “Others – with properties and accounts abroad, but declared to the ISJC or only with opera. information about relatives”. There is no data in which countries their accounts and properties are located. It is not known when they were found, nor with what amounts they were fed.

Our media sent the names of the 17 judges from the main list to the NRA and from there returned information that all but one of the judges had been subject to a fact-finding and circumstance check (PUFD), and one of them had also had an audit. Boyan Magdalinchev is without PUFD and without revision.

All PUFOs formed by the magistrates on the list are for the same time period: 01.01.2016 – 30.08.2019. This fact alone confirms the credibility of the list we received from a trusted source. It is not plausible for the NRA to check all 5000 magistrates exactly for this time period. Such a large-scale action would inevitably become public, which is not a fact.

Asked if he confirmed the names on the list, Boyko Rashkov remained silent. An important detail is that in an interview with Sasho Dikov, Rashkov announced that among the magistrates on the list there is also one with the initials I.G., obviously hinting at Ivan Geshev, but he is not present there.

Accounts and/or properties abroad

Detecting account holders abroad is a routine operation of the NRA through international exchange. As it became clear from Naplix, the revenue agency maintains up-to-date lists of persons occupying senior public positions, as well as their relatives. The exchange of data on accounts of foreign nationals in the EU is automated. Thus, at the request of the State Agency for National Security, the CIAF, the Prosecutor’s Office or at the initiative of the NRA itself, it can be quickly established in which EU countries the persons on the list maintain accounts.

It is more complicated (but not much) to establish the presence of properties in the EU. The most difficult, but not impossible, is to obtain information about property outside the EU. As it became clear from the words of the head of the National Revenue Agency Rumen Spetsov, the inspections for Bulgarians with properties in Dubai revealed by BIRD.

Our data analysts made efforts to check the asset declarations of all magistrates on the list, after which we systematized the findings in a table.

former

It turns out that some of the magistrates declared their properties even before 2016 – the earliest alleged date for the preparation of this list. Others have declared them with a few years delay after they were formed, which indicates that they were not in order, but after the start of the inspections they corrected themselves. There is a large group of judges who have not declared accounts and properties abroad to this day.

Our reporters made significant efforts to find phone numbers and contact the individuals on the list to get comments from them.

Passes and logout

“I cannot answer such a question. I don’t see why you are asking me this” – this is how he answered Emil Zhelev, former judge at the Specialized Criminal Court, now a judge at the Administrative Court – Sofia region on the question whether there are undeclared accounts abroad. According to the list, he has such, and his declarations show that he declared 8000 euros in an account abroad in 2020, or after an inspection by the NRA. Emil Zhelev seems to be careless in his declarations because he has submitted corrections several times. For example, in 2017 he failed to declare 4 accounts in the country and two loans. Judge Zhelev became famous for giving the green light to the garbage plant of Rumen Gaitanski – The Wolf near Pavlikeni (case 634/2023).

Three more judges seem to have passed “correctional” and declared bonds and shares after the start of the PUFD in 2020: Slava Gyosheva from the Sofia Regional Court, Tatyana Stancheva-Ivanova, President of the District Court of Karnobat and Teodora Hristova from the District Court of Svishtov.

One of the judges who have not declared accounts and properties abroad at all is Desislava Dzharova, a former judge of the Sofia Regional Court. She said that she did not know about the list and had no accounts abroad, and since 2019 she has not been a judge because she is “tired” after 20 years in the system. It is noteworthy that Dzharova was tired in September 2019, and the NRA’s probe against her began a month earlier. Her example was followed by two more magistrates who left the system after a probe was launched against them.

Another judge on the list without declared accounts abroad is Denitsa Valkova-Petkova, who is now administering justice at the Supreme Court of Cassation. We were not able to contact her, but our reporter spoke with her husband, with whom they have been divorced for years. According to him, she kept their house in England and an account there. In addition, he had information about her other assets, which our media will check further. For example, for a car declared by his ex-wife for BGN 1000, but it cost more than 20 times more.

Blackmail?

The list includes judges who dutifully declared accounts abroad or shares and bonds before the start of the probe in 2019. They filed declarations in 2018.

Totka Dimitrova is known as a judge-rapporteur in the case in the Supreme Court of Cassation, which finally confirmed the revocation of Corpbank’s license and also in another case, on the final declaration of Corpbank in bankruptcy. Recently, the ECHR found serious flaws and deficiencies in the judicial review in this case.

Among the judges with properties abroad, there are also several who have declared their properties not only before the inspection, but even before 2016. These are Georgi Terziev from the Administrative Court – Sofia, who declared fields in Greece back in 2009, Rumyana Bakalova, a former judge who declared a villa in Greece in 2012 and Milena Decheva, deputy. Chairperson of the General Assembly – Haskovo, who declared a property in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2015.

It is not clear why all of them are included in the list, since at least they were in order and declared their properties and accounts.

In this group is also Radostin Radkov, the former head of the ACSC, who has declared a property in Greece – a house with a yard in Asprovalta, back in 2015.

Radkov is the only judge who has undergone a tax audit and gave an interesting version of his presence on the list. According to him, it was prepared back in 2017 by the former Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov. Радков счита, че е бил нарочен заради кариерните си амбиции и описа ситуация, която силно прилича на опит за шантаж със списъка. Мнението му ще публикуваме като отделен материал, след като потърсим лицата, които той спомена пред BIRD.

Boyan Magdalinchev from the SJC was adamant that he had no accounts abroad, but had money in foreign investment and pension deposits, which, however, were in Bulbank. The money was from compensation. He expressed bewilderment that he was on the list.

To all other judges we have not been able to contact, our media will provide the right of reply and comment.

Let’s not chase each other, that we will probably get caught…

The absence of audit acts can mean different things. For example, that the NRA has not found any discrepancies in income. But on the other hand, if the data is seized by the Prosecutor’s Office or the Anti-Corruption Commission and an investigation or pre-trial proceedings are underway, then the NRA must wait for its result.

It is known that the files of corpses in the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office can be stuck as long as necessary, and their objects can become an object of pressure.

The fact that the magistrates on this list have not yet received any sanction for the undeclared property is also indicative of the unfair fight against corruption in our country. In the history of the Bulgarian administration of justice, there is no known successful criminal prosecution against an authorized person who has filed a false property declaration. The landmark case of politics Hristo Bisserov, for whom the data on assets abroad were submitted by a foreign service, crashed in court and he is even about to sue the prosecutor’s office.

Another significant circumstance is that with each successive revision of the anti-corruption law, political parties shyly fail to introduce some kind of sanction for the authorized persons caught in a shoot with the declarations, even a fine. The last amendment to the law from the Assembly is no exception.

/следва/

Цацаров крие несъответствията в декларациите на властта за 2019

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