Progress in five of Bulgaria’s high profile cases of great public interest has been undermined by a legal loophole by which defendants hinder the court’s work, leaving the media counting the number of postponed hearings.

Bulgaria’s legal system has been criticised for its inefficiency on countless occasions by the European Union. But it seems that Bulgarian lawyers are taking full advantage of what the system can offer in terms of postponing trials. In doing so, of course, they only delay the delivery of justice.

Falling ill or changing lawyers in the middle of the trial is a favourite stalling tactic for defendants. The law does not limit the number of times defendants can change lawyers. This gives new representatives the opportunity to seek more time to get to know the case. The sickness issue, however, has become something of a fashion lately as demonstrated by five recently postponed trials of great public interest.

The latest example is that of the alleged embezzlement of EU funds by companies linked to controversial businessman Mario Nikolov and eight others. On March 17, Sofia City Court postponed the hearing of the case until April 23 because one of Nikolov’s lawyers had severe bronchitis.  On March 16, prosecutors in the Black Sea city of Bourgas investigated the authenticity of the sick leave form, presented by Iliyana Nakova, former employee of the Supreme Judicial Council, on March 13.

Nakova faces prosecution for attempting to bribe a traffic police officer in 2008 after leaving the scene of a minor accident. She allegedly threatened traffic police with dismissal and threw 60 leva in the back of their car. Since then she has got the case postponed four times.  

On March 16 Sofia City Court postponed yet again the case against Valentin Dimitrov - the former head of Sofia’s heating utility Toplofikatsia charged with money laundering and embezzling millions of leva - as well as four other people. The trial was postponed until April 6 because one of the defendants, Emil Antonov, had to be hospitalised.

Vesselin Georgiev, the former head of the National Road Infrastructure Fund who faces prosecution for malefeasance in office, was supposed to appear in court on March 10. Instead, his defence said that he had been in a Plovdiv hospital since March 4. Georgiev left his post in 2008 after media reports said that his brothers’ companies had been the main beneficiaries of NRIF projects worth millions of leva. A few months after he left NRIF the European Commission froze about 800 million euro in funds to Bulgaria over suspicions of corruption.

Perhaps the biggest exploitation of Bulgaria’s judicial shortcomings by a defence team involves the notorious case against the Marinov brothers - Krassimir and Nikolai - charged with conspiring to murder three people. The case against the brothers has been ongoing since 2005 with little success. Four other people are also accused of the same crime. Court hearings became a veritable farce with the older brother Krassimir appearing in a wheelchair or walking on crutches.

On March 12 it became clear that the case will drag on for at least another six months after one of the defendants, Ivo Karageorgiev, faced heart surgery.

Amid increased criticism coming from the EU, legislators now seem determined to tackle the problem. In November 2008, MPs discussed changes to the penal code which stipulated that courts can appoint a public defender in cases of great public interest when lawyers fall ill one by one. These amendments are yet to become law.