• Criminal justice

Criminal justice

After Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union, cross-border crimes along the country’s borders with Turkey, Macedonia, Serbia and the Black Sea have become a security problem for the EU.

This paper explores the problems in the detection, investigation and prosecution of these cross-border crimes. It also gives an overview of the existing legislative, organisational and technical measures to improve law enforcement and criminal justice in the border areas.

The paper covers the following typical cross-border crimes:

• traffic in human beings
• smuggling of goods and narcotics
• transport of counterfeit currency, securities and payment cards
• foreign exchange violations
• illegal export of listed cultural monuments or archive records
• illegal crossing of the border and smuggling of persons
• illegal carrying across the border of hazardous substances

The growing complexity and sophistication of these cross border crimes has resulted in increased difficulty in the detection and prosecution of these offences. In particular, the paper identifies the following problems.
Problems with the legal framework and its enforcement which include:

• short deadlines for pre-trial and trial stages which makes compliance impossible
• failure or delayed execution of letter rogatory which results in the procrastination of criminal proceedings
• unduly severe penalties for persons who only transport drugs (‘mules’) without any connection to the organised gangs

Organisational and methodological problems which include:

• lack of knowledge and skills among investigating authorities
• lack of uniform methodological guidelines for investigation

Problems relating to facilities and equipment which include:

• lack of appropriate equipment such as scanning devices
• no declaration forms in rare languages such as Arabic and Albanian

Among the measures recommended for improving the effectiveness of criminal justice are:

• the criminal code should be amended in order to distinguish between smuggling of goods that qualify as crimes and those that are administrative violations
• a joint decision-making mechanism for the investigation of crimes should be created
• joint decisions should be made to enhance communication and coordination between the court and the pre-trial authorities
• investigating authorities including judges should be offered incentives to work in remote areas
• a draft law should be prepared and presented to the Council of Ministers to ratify 2000 Convention on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters in the EU
  

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