site.btaCourt of Justice May Adjudge that Payment of Corpbank Deposits Was Delayed

Brussels/Luxembourg, June 7 (BTA Correspondent Nikolay Jeliazkov) - The Advocate-General of the Court of Justice of the European Union Juliane Kokott has come out with an opinion related the bankruptcy of Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank).

The opinion was occasioned by the request of Corpbank depositor Nikolai Kantarev, the press release says. The deposit of the Bulgarian citizen in the bank was closed ex officio because the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) withdrew Corpbank's authorization license. The sum liable to be returned was paid to the depositor through the Bank Deposit Guarantee Fund.

The applicant Kantarev claims that BNB owes him compensation for damages which in his opinion were caused by insufficient supervision in the form of delayed payment of his deposit at Corpbank. In his opinion, according to the European Directive on deposit-guarantee schemes, BNB should have passed a decision for payment within five days after the deposits are declared unavailable, not after it withdrew the licence of Corpbank, such as the requirement of Bulgarian law was at that time. Unavailable deposits are those which cannot be paid by the bank.

The applicant claims he has sustained damages as a result of violation of EU legislation. The Administrative Court in Varna (on the Black Sea) has addressed the Court of Justice, including the procedure for seeking compensation for damages for infringement on EU law under the conditions at which it is assumed that there is a missing deposit, as well as matters about the possible direct effect of the said Directive.

In her conclusion today, Advocate-General Juliane Kokott proposed to the court to accept that the lack of deposits should be made public within five work days after the authorized institutions have first established that a bank has not paid the due and callable deposits, regardless of the decision about its insolvency and the withdrawal of the licence. Non-abidance by this requirement is a sufficient infringement on EU law to involve the liability of the state.

Another question is referred to the principles of equivalence and effectiveness to be interpreted as permitting, in the absence of national rules, the courts having jurisdiction and the procedure for hearing actions for damages based on an infringement of EU law to be determined by reference to the authority which committed the infringement and by reference to the nature of the act/failure to act through which the infringement was committed if, as a result of the application of those criteria, the actions are heard by different courts, general and administrative courts, on the basis of different codes of procedure, the Code of Civil Procedure and the Code of Administrative Procedure.

Corpbank, then Bulgaria's fourth biggest lender, suspended all operations on June 21, 2014 after a run by depositors left it illiquid. The Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) Governing Council withdrew Corpbank's banking licence, effective November 6, 2014. The court declared the bank bankrupt on April 22, 2015. Its insolvency date was set at June 21, 2014.