The savings of magistrates have almost tripled over a period of ten years.
This is shown by an analysis of the public declarations that magistrates submit to the Inspectorate of the Supreme Judicial Council, and before 2017 to the CAFIAP. The analysis was prepared by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives, Global Metrics and BIRD. Technological means are used to extract information from public declarations and data analysis software, with the help of which the collected information is summarized and analyzed. For a period of ten years (from 2013 to 2023), the savings declared by magistrates increased from 28.7 thousand. leva to 79 thousand. BGN on average per person. It is interesting to note that until 2019 the savings declared by family members of magistrates were higher than the savings of magistrates, and after 2019 this trend reversed and magistrates declared a higher average saved financial resource than their family members. Over the years, the share of magistrates declaring cash has also increased – from just under a third in 2013, their share has increased to 80% by 2023. Persons whose total amount of all declared funds is over BGN 100 thousand increases from 4% at the beginning of the period (2013) to about 30% at the end (2023). As of 2023, persons who declare cash over BGN 200 thousand. 10% of the investigators who filed a declaration for the respective year, 11% of prosecutors and 13% of judges. The distances between the different types of magistrates (judges, prosecutors, investigators) in different periods are less than 10%. The average declared resource per person by judges, for example, is 10% greater than the declared financial resource by prosecutors and 6% greater than that of investigators. The differences between the different instances are more sensitive. In 2023, the highest is the average amount of money declared by judges in the supreme courts – 142 thousand. followed by the average financial resources declared by judges at appellate level (BGN 125 thousand) and judges at district level – BGN 94 thousand. leva. The funds declared in the district courts are 65 thousand. BGN on average per person. And if the funds declared by prosecutors at district and appellate level are approximately similar to those of judges at the same levels, at the cassation level this difference is seriously deepened, and at the district level it is within about 10 thousand. in favor of the judges. With an average of 123 thousand. leva of available savings and cash declared by the prosecutors in the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office / Supreme Prosecutor’s Office, their colleagues in the supreme courts declare an average of BGN 142 thousand. leva. The distances in the accumulated financial resources in the ten-year period under study outline a deepening of the differences between the different levels in the judicial system. The most serious are these differences in court. If at the beginning of the period the distances between the district, district and appellate levels in terms of the declared financial resources are small, at the end of the period the differences increase significantly. In the Prosecutor’s Office, this trend is also present, but with a smaller amplitude. The savings of prosecutors from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) are growing the fastest (nearly 5 times in 3 years).
In almost the entire period of the study, at all levels of the judiciary, the declared financial resources (savings and available funds) of judges are slightly higher than those of prosecutors. The picture outlined in this way shows an increase in savings and available financial resources for all types of magistrates, an increase in the number of people whose savings are increasing and subject to declaration, and an increase in the differences between the different levels compared to the distances that were available 10 years ago. The presentation of the analysis can be downloaded here. A comment on the study by Atanas Chobanov on the Bulgarian National Radio can be found here. BIRD integrates the data on magistrates in its public search engine in the declarations of political figures, which allows searching by various criteria: name of the person, institution, post, affiliation to the State Security, properties in the country by settlements, properties abroad by country, car brands, etc. The search engine is available here: https://scan.bird.bg/pep
Материалът Magistrates’ money: what public data tell us е публикуван за пръв път на BIRD.
