Bulgaria's Supreme Judicial Council (VSS) is to permanently remove its member Kamen Sitnilski.

The "judicial Parliament" will take the decision months after it suspended him on a temporary basis over suspicions he had participated in backdoor vote-rigging for the appoiting of members of the council.

Bulgarian DARIK radio has revealed that the three-member disciplinary committee (composed by VSS magistrates), to which Sitnilski's case had been delegated, will also declare itself in favour of dismissing him.

It will take then 17 out of 25 votes in the VSS to remove its member.

In case the magistrates agree to discharge him, his ousting will be the first dismissal in the Supreme Judicial Council since it was established in 1991. 

Former Deputy Chief Prosecutor Kamen Sitnilski was suspended for six months on July 26.

The VSS then opened the proceedings on the proposal of the VSS Ethics Committee, after leaks of wiretaps containing conversations between Sitnilski, Rumen Boev, a VSS member, and other magistrates.

On the recordings, they are heard as agreeing how they would vote at the delegate assembly convened in the autumn of 2012 to elect VSS members from the prosecutors' quota.

The final decision is scheduled for Thursday, March 13.