site.btaUPDATED Innovation Minister: Bulgarian Development Bank's BGN 150 Mln Loan to Roadway Construction Is Uncollectible

Caretaker Minister of Innovation and Growth Rosen Karadimov, who spoke to reporters here on Wednesday, said that the nearly BGN 150 million loan granted by the Bulgarian Development Bank (BDB) in 2019 to Roadway Construction AD is unsecured and uncollectible. Karadimov was commenting on Wednesday's news that the Commission for Anti-Corruption and the prosecutor's office are conducting searches in connection with an investigation into a loan worth BGN 148.5 million granted by the BDB to Roadway Construction.

In 2019, BDB granted a very large, practically unsecured loan of nearly BGN 150 million to Roadway Construction, the Minister said. He added: "When BDB's new Supervisory Board started work in 2022, the first thing we did was to ask for full information about this loan, and we conducted an analysis of the actions of the bank's previous management, appointed by Kiril Petkov as caretaker economy minister." Karadimov became chair of the BDB's Supervisory Board in November 2022.

Karadimov said: "Under the Special Pledges Act, a manager was appointed for Roadway Construction under this credit. We did a recapitulation, and it turns out that economically, under this form of execution, the BDB receives nothing but incurs costs to maintain the company purchased with this loan, Patstroyinzhenering [UIC 108001767]. The BDB then announced a public tender for the shares of Patstroyinzhenering. The auction has been going on since the beginning of June at a starting price of BGN 9 million. There were six or seven sessions of this tender, and nobody showed up. The price dropped to BGN 3.5 million, when a company came forward and paid the deposit and wanted to buy the company."

The BDB has handed over all the information on the loan file to the relevant departments, which means the tender will be stopped, the Minister reported. Without the original documents, the shares of the company cannot be transferred.

The tender showed that the BGN 150 million was uncollectible and unsecured. The loan was given in 2019 and if then, experts knew and kept it on the down-low that the loan was uncollectible, now, after the tender, everyone found out, Karadimov said.