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Three years ago, the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) refused to initiate an investigation against then-chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov for the TZUM-Gate scandal. Now the SJC has refused to ask Chief Judicial Inspector Teodora Tochkova for an explanation for covering up the fact that an investigation into the case has never been carried out. The majority in the SJC rejected the request of the president of the Supreme Court of Cassation, Lozan Panov, to hear Tochkova in the “Central Department Store Gate” case.
In July, the court ruled that the inspection should reveal information about the civil activist Nikolay Nedelchev scandal. Tochkova issued a decision to provide the information on December 3, after Panov requested a hearing at the SJC. The information showed that Tsatsarov refused to help the inspectors in any way and was acquitted.
After that, the inspection hid the information for three years, and the day before Teodora Tochkova explained that it did so because the attorney general was found not guilty. It turns out that he actually refused to cooperate and the inspection simply stopped his inspection.
Before the SJC, former prosecutor Yordan Stoev explained that Tochkova did not need to be heard and Panov should withdraw his proposal. According to him, the SJC has no right to mock the chief inspector. The question remains whether Stoev believes Tochkova is untouchable.
Panov responded that Tochkova had damaged the prestige of the judiciary. “This is an abuse of rights,” he said of Tochkova’s refusal to provide information on the door of the central department store.
“Ms. Tochkova is not irresponsible and irresponsible, we have such a figure in the judiciary,” Panov said, referring to the chief prosecutor.
According to him, the Judicial Inspection acted as an umbrella for the Attorney General and the SJC acted as an umbrella over the Inspector General. However, this did not impress the majority in the SJC, who rejected the SJC chief’s request by 12-3 votes.
According to businessman Sasho Donchev, the TZUM-gate affair seemed like a textbook example of pressure from the chief prosecutor on an independent media editor.
He said that the red businessman Georgi Gergov organized a meeting in his private office (located in the central department store) between Sasho Donchev and Sotir Tsatsarov. As Donchev said at the time, Tsatsarov asked him about the content of the Sega newspaper and the Hristo Komarnitsky cartoons, as well as whether he financed the Yes Bulgaria party and why he did so after he had a good deal.
Furthermore, according to Donchev, Tsatsarov asked him: “Do you doubt that your telephones and communications are under control?” Subsequently, the Attorney General flatly refused to answer questions about the case. His thesis was that he had not met with defendants or criminals and that he had not violated the law.
The TZUM-Gate case illustrates how irresponsible and untouchable the Attorney General can be. In April 2017, the SJC handed over Tsatsarov and refused to deal with the scandal, after the chief prosecutor refused to explain to the judiciary. The SJC later went against its own practice of investigating such cases. The Judicial Council carried out, albeit formally, an inspection of Yanevagate, and almost ten years ago the scandal with the political-judicial lobbyist Krasio Chernia was stopped. A total eclipse was dropped at the door of the central department store, and Tsatsarov’s reluctance to talk about the meeting was obvious.
Before the SJC, Tsatsarov confirmed that he had attended the meeting with Georgi Gergov and Sasho Donchev. According to him, the scandal was a “stage”. Later, he did not deny that they were close acquaintances of Gergov on the Plovdiv line.
The TZUM-gate scandal came after the businessman and editor of the Sega government critical newspaper, Sasho Donchev, announced that the meeting had been organized by Gergov and held in his office at the TZUM on Tsatsarov’s initiative. The attorney general then announced that it was not he but Donchev who initiated the meeting, in which he tried to pressure in connection with an inspection of his company Overgas. Both, obviously, will not be subject to an impartial investigation, even if Sasho Donchev was heard on the phone.
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