site.btaMovement for Rights and Freedoms Urges Speedier Hiring of Foreign Firm to Trace Corpbank Assets

Movement for Rights and Freedoms Urges Speedier Hiring of Foreign Firm to Trace Corpbank Assets

Sofia, April 23 (BTA) - The Movement for Rights and Freedoms
(MRF) insists on speeding the process of hiring a foreign firm
experienced in tracing cash flows in connection with the
Corpbank case, Yordan Tsonev MP of the MRF told a news briefing
in Parliament on Thursday.

On June 20, 2014, Corpbank (Bulgaria's fourth biggest lender)
suspended all operations after a panic run by depositors left it
 illiquid. The central bank's Governing Council withdrew
Corpbank's banking licence on November 5, 2014, and the bank's
bankruptcy was petitioned on November 7. The Sofia City Court
adjudicated the bank bankrupt on April 22.

Tsonev said that, replying to a letter from MRF MPs Lyutvi
Mestan, Yordan Tsonev and Delyan Peevski, Bulgarian Deposit
Insurance Fund (BDIF) Management Board Chairman Radoslav
Milenkov pointed out that the possibility to commission persons
possessing the requisite international experience of
investigating bank failures to trace the Corpbank assets will be
 discussed shortly with a team of law firms.

The preparation of a legal analysis on the provision of
information and disclosure of banking secrecy by the temporary
trustees in bankruptcy to the investigating firm has been
assigned, Milenkov also wrote, quoted by Tsonev. The BDIF head
has information that the conditions for engaging the firms in
questions will be finalized presently, and they will be given
seven working days to send proposals and an action plan. The
proposals for a selection of a candidate will be analyzed and
ranked. A direct interview will be carried out, a schedule will
be detailed, and a contract will be signed with the selected
candidate.

"We are dissatisfied with the pace at which this publicly
significant problem makes progress. We insist on an acceleration
 of the process," Tsonev said. In his words, the MRF are keen on
 the hiring of such firm because "the things that have been
happening before and after the Corpbank management was taken
over by conservators and after it was delicensed give us much
cause for concern."

Asked how much the hiring of a foreign firm would cost, Tsonev
said that Milenkov reported in his letter that such firms have
already been approached and the financial parameters are being
sorted out. "The experience in Ireland shows that the benefit
for the State is hundred and thousand fold greater because the
fee is incomparably smaller than the sums recovered," the MP
added.