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If whistleblowers receive a reward for doing so - a material reward - then the fight against corruption will take off.

This is what Slavcho Kanchev, known as the father of DPS deputy Delyan Peevski, claims in his lengthy article

.

"The defect in the anti-corruption legislation in our country, initially in the form of the Penal Code from the time of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, remained in effect in the initial years of the so-called "transition" after November 10, 1989, including the most the new version of the relevant normative base is that the material interest of the possible informants for committed corruption crimes and in a more general plan for harming the state is missing," Kanchev wrote.



In his article, he argues that he did not discover hot water and points to the idea of ​​the so-called

whistleblower in UK and US law.

Kanchev claims that in 1318, King Edward II proposed that a third of the fine be paid to the one who reported abuse by public officials, i.e.

corruption.

Subsequently, this idea was developed in Anglo-Saxon law - a reward for the one who filed the report based on the recovered from the damage prevented due to corruption.

"

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In his Act for Suppressing Favoritism in Litigation and Against the Practice of Bribery of Judges, King Henry VIII in 1540 decreed that common informers were entitled to sue in certain cases where claims were involved regarding land ownership.

This law is still in force in the Republic of Ireland, although it was repealed in 1976 in England.

The idea of ​​the right of an ordinary informer to sue when the interests of the United Kingdom were affected was later carried over to the English colony of Massachusetts in the New World.

It is worded as "the fines for fraud in the sale of bread shall be apportioned one-third to the inspector who discovers the fraud and the remainder to the benefit of the city where the fraud occurred."

Similar laws could be found in the legal codes of Connecticut, New York, Virginia and North Carolina," adds Kanchev.

Peevski's father gives another example: "The Civil War in the United States of America (1861–1865) was marked by fraud at all levels of government, both in the federal services and in the administration of the insurgent Confederacy. During the war , unscrupulous vendors sold the Union army rickety and infirm horses and mules in poor health, defective arms and ammunition, and rotten food, among other fraudulent practices.

That's why the US Congress passed the Anti-False Claims Act.

The idea of ​​the law is that anyone who supplies goods or performs services to the state that do not meet the stated quantities or the required quality is criminally liable.

This law went into effect on March 2, 1863, and because it was passed during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, it was called the "Lincoln Law" (the False Claims Act).

The legislation imposes liability on individuals or companies (most often federal suppliers) who cheat when participating in government programs.

Importantly, the law offers an award called a "qui tam writ" that allows citizens to sue the state and be paid a percentage of the amount recovered.

"Qui tam" is an abbreviation of the Latin legal phrase "qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipco in hac parte sequitur" – "he who brings an action for our lord the king as well as for himself".

Over the years, the law in question has been amended so that it no longer applies only to the military case.

"Why isn't a similar law in force in Bulgaria, which would stimulate the disclosure of fraud against the interests of citizens in the face of the state, including accidentally hidden taxes," asks Kanchev.