site.btaCorpbank Clients Ask State to Block All of Bank's Assets

ESD 16:01:00 21-09-2014
MY1600ES.103
103 ECONOMY - CORPBANK - COMMITTEE - LETTER

Corpbank Clients
Ask State to Block
All of Bank's Assets


Sofia, September 21 (BTA) - The committee for protecting Bulgaria's financial and banking stability has sent an open letter to the media, in which they insist that the State blocks all assets, which have been directly or indirectly purchased with credits by Corporate Commercial Bank's (Corpbank). Corpbank clients established the committee in Sofia on August 19, 2014.

The bank's clients claim that these assets have been purchased with their deposits and funds, which is why they demand that such a measure is taken.

The letter further states that for 90 days already the committee has been waiting for the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) to answer whether companies which have received credits from Corpbank are secured, so that the bank's credit portfolio has a real value.

The letter also demands an answer about statements that 3.5 billion leva are missing from Corpbank, for which its majority owner Tsvetan Vassilev is responsible. If such money is missing, the public must know to whom it was given, the committee says.

The committee's founders also want BNB Governor Ivan Iskrov to say the truth about the bank as well as to "stop threatening to sue (former Culture Minister, who also has a deposit at the troubled bank) Vezhdi Rashidov or any other victims of the Corpbank case."

Corpbank (Bulgaria's fourth largest lender) suspended all operations on June 21, 2014 after a run by depositors left it illiquid and on the same day it was placed by the central bank under special supervision for a maximum of six months to allow a thorough audit and possible restructuring. Tsvetan Vassilev, whose Sofia-based Bromak EOOD is the majority shareholder in Corpbank with a 50.7 per cent stake, is charged with aiding and abetting senior executives of the bank to embezzle nearly 206 million leva from Corpbank between December 2011 and June 2014. After being placed Interpol's Red Notice Wanted List, Vassilev was detained by the Serbian judicial authorities on September 16. He is in Serbia, released on own recognizance and awaiting ongoing extradition proceedings in Bulgaria. LN/MY

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