site.btaVivacom Owner Has Not Paid EUR 180 Mln Owed to VTB Capital, Creditor Wants to Sell Collateral

Vivacom Owner Has Not Paid EUR 180 Mln Owed to VTB Capital, Creditor Wants to Sell Collateral

Sofia, November 6 (BTA) - InterV Investment, which owns the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (brand name Vivacom, Bulgaria's largest telecom operator in terms of revenue), owes its creditor VTB Capital 180 million euro due since May, says VTB Capital AD CEO Milen Velchev in a statement to the media Friday.

VTB Capital is the investment-banking arm of Russia's second-largest bank Vneshtorgbank (VTB). In 2013, it extended a 150 million euro bridge financing loan to InterV Investment, a Luxembourg-based indirect holding company of Vivacom. The loan was secured by 100 percent of the shares of InterV, so the shares went to VTB Capital after the default. On October 28, Velchev told BTA that VTB Capital had hired global advisory firm Ernst & Young to help it with the immediate sale of Vivacom.

Vivacom's shareholders include fugitive Bulgarian banker Tzvetan Vassilev, who was at the centre of a scandal last year when a bank he majority-owned, Corporate Commercial Bank, was hit by a run on deposits and shut down.

In his statement to the media, Velchev also says that the situation with the overdue 180 million euro is understandable given that one of Vivacom's owners is Tsvetan Vassilev, who is hiding from justice and cannot be extradited from Serbia, and there is noone to refinance the payment of InterV's debt.

"We have seen documents showing that the real owner continues to be Tsvetan Vassilev", the statement reads. What is more important is that the role of VTB Capital is that of a creditor of InterV, and it is not the only creditor, Velchev notes. Like every other financial institution in the world which has not received the repayment of its loan for five months, VTB Capital has to seek its money through the sale of the collateral, he explains.