site.btaUPDATED Parliamentary Committee Hears Corpbank Supervisory Board Ex-Chair Vassilev

Tzvetan Vassilev, former chair of the Supervisory Board of the failed Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank), was given an online hearing on Thursday by the National Assembly Ad Hoc Committee of Inquiry into Facts and Circumstances about Irregular Influence in the Justice System and the Commitments of Members of the Judiciary Inconsistent with the Standards of Independence and Professional Ethics, the Activities of the Groups around Martin "the Notary" Bozhanov and Former Prosecutor Petyo "the Euro" Petrov.

The Committee was due to hear first former Supreme Court of Cassation President Lozan Panov, followed by Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) Floor Leader Delyan Peevski and caretaker Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov. Panov and Peevski did not confirm their attendance, while Stoyanov wrote to the Committee to say that he would be unable to take part in the hearing, Committee Chair Nadejda Iordanova said.

Corpbank, then Bulgaria's fourth biggest lender, suspended all operations on June 21, 2014 after a run by depositors left it illiquid. Corpbank was delicensed, effective November 6, 2014, and the court declared it bankrupt on April 22, 2015. In 2016, Vassilev was charged with syphoning off BGN 7 billion from the bank and has been evading justice in Belgrade ever since.

Petrov was the chief technical mastermind behind the hit on Corpbank, Vassilev said. He could not have possibly submitted an alert against Petrov, whose investigation department made all arrangements for the bank's collapse, considering that the prosecution service did not spare the time and found no reason to question him, despite the desire expressed repeatedly by him and by his lawyers in Bulgaria, the banker argued.

Asked who was Petrov's "intellectual inspiration", Vassilev said that, beyond any doubt, that was Delyan Peevski who, acting through a go-between, demanded assets of the bank to the value of BGN 1 billion.

"It is an open secret that until mid-2013 Corpbank actively loan-financed projects of Peevski and [his mother Irena] Krasteva, including some joint projects of ours," Vassilev said when he was asked to identify a person referred by the initials "DP 1" in the Corpbank bankruptcy case records. "All indirect lendings were accounted for in a single daily statement. Quite a few of these loans were extended to media on Peevski's demand," the banker said. "Somewhere in the middle of 2013 I realized that Delyan Peevski did not intend to repay his loans. In late 2013 and early 2014 we started negotiations to settle our relations. At that time he was already preparing the institutional attack on the bank," Vassilev told the Ad Hoc Committee. 

"[Former prosecutor general] Ivan Geshev should say why I was not questioned. As far as Delyan Peevski is concerned, I believe that he was questioned indeed, but in connection with the notorious allegation about a murder conspiracy, which was part of the scenario for my elimination," he added.

Vassilev said further that, in his opinion, Geshev was "installed by those controlling the Supreme Judicial Council: Delyan Peevski and [former prime minister and current GERB party leader] Boyko Borissov". "I am certain that Ivan Geshev has nothing to do with the Corpbank indictment, it was written somewhere else," the banker pointed out.

"The bank extended loans by the rules on loan financing. When a decision was made to finance a particular business, mainly linked to Mr Peevski, I had the decisive say. For a long time he was completely prompt servicing these debts - until the summer or autumn of 2013, when a different decision must have obviously been made, and it was implemented nine months later," Vassilev explained.

"I cannot recall that we have discussed and voted on hearing any individuals not attending in person," Hamid Hamid MP of the MRF said at the beginning of the Committee meeting. He called Vassilev "the conman of the century" and added that he was on a wanted list. "Let him come here and say what he is afraid of," Hamid said further.