In 2006, the prosecution closed 12,000 cases on grounds of limitation, prosecutor general Boris Velchev said presenting a report on the operation of his institution and the investigative authorities to the Committee on Legal Matters of the National Assembly, BTA reported.

In the same year, the share of cases returned for further investigation increased reaching 8 per cent: 4,213 out of a total of 51,070 were returned.

"I find it difficult to say why the number of returned cases is increasing and why our performance was worse last year," Velchev said.

In his view, the worsening of the performance of prosecutors is that they are allowed to return cases to the investigative services for further examination, the big workload they are burdened with and the lack of procedure by which the court rulings on returning cases could be contested.
The prosecution worked on 430,000 file cases and initiated 230,000 pretrial proceedings in the period under review.

Velchev added that over 46,000 prison and fine sentences had been issued in more than 90 per cent of the cases filed by the prosecution.