On a press conference today BILI announced its report with conclusions from the inspections on the random case assignment in the Supreme Administrative Court, the Supreme Court of Cassation and Sofia City Court.
Despite the limited number of visits to the respective courts and the lack of relevant information BILI made its findings and conclusions based on the observed practices. The focus of the inspections lies on the identification system risk factors and the approach towards their regulation. In this regard, one of the main recommendations is for thorough further inspections, which would uncover irregularities and abuses.
As a result of the conducted study BILI’s team found that the random case assignment program in the Supreme Administrative Court and Sofia City Court lacks the adequate level of security, which makes it prone to manipulations with no traces of any irregular intervention. On the other hand, the software product used in the Supreme Court of Cassation is assessed as adequate in terms of security. Furthemore, neither the parties have guarantees and means to defend their interest of the random selection of a panel to try their case, nor the Inspectorate with the Supreme Judicial Council excercises adequate control of the principle of random case assingment.
In the light of these findings BILI made some recommendations. For example, the unreliable programs should be substituted and a thorough planning of a new case assignment system should be made. In addition, the Supreme Judicial Council should unify all relevant instructions so that a uniform standart of case assignment be established in the whole country.
The report will be presented to the Supreme Judicial Council.