Bulgarian Commission for Personal Data Protection

In 2019 two Bulgarian electronic media were fined for infringements of data protection legislation based on a complaint of a data subject. In its decision the Commission for Personal Data Protection ("CPDP") established that the two electronic media had infringed Article 5 (1) (d) of the GDPR by publishing on their sites articles, containing the photograph of the complainant. The subject of the articles was apprehension of a person accused on murder charges. According to the complaint there was a coincidence in the names of the accused and the complainant, who was not related to the murder, but his photo was published by the media. During the investigation it was proven that the accused and the complinant were not the same person. Therefore, the CPDP imposed an administrative fine of 5000 BGN to one of the electronic media and an administrative fine of 20 000 BGN to the other electronic media as it did not act on removing the personal data.