site.btaUPDATED Dogan's Circle in Parliament Urges Prosecutors to Step Up after Hearing of Ex-Banker Shed Light on Delyan Peevski's Role in Corpbank Failure

The group of MPs of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) who remained loyal to honorary chair Ahmed Dogan, held a news briefing on Friday to urge the prosecution service to step up after a Thursday hearing by an ad hoc parliamentary committee of Tsvetan Vassilev, the exiled former banker and owner of the failed Corpbank, shared insider information on the role of Delyan Peevski in the 2014 collapse of Corpbank.

For over a month now, Peevski and Dogan have been fighting a war over the control of the party. First, Peevski started removing Dogan's supporters from the parliamentary group and from senior positions across the country. Then Dogan, until recently the unchallenged patriarch of MRF, asked Peevski to come down as one of the two party chairpersons (the other is Dogan loyalist Dzhevdet Chakarov) but he refused to comply. The MRF group in Parliament is now split into two with the Dogan camp outnumbering the Peevski camp by a little. Among the MRF, electorate, Dogan is the absolute favourite, according to a new poll.

During the Thursday hearing, Vassilev said that Peevski was "the intellectual inspiration" of a campaign that led to the collapse of Corpbank. He also said 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 with Vassilev himself. "Quite a few of these loans were extended to media on Peevski's demand. 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 a parliamentary ad hoc committee. He also criticized the lack of accountability in Bulgaria's judiciary, pointing out that he has not been questioned by authorities despite offering to testify. He suggested that political motives are behind his prosecution and connected the Corpbank case to broader issues of corruption involving high-profile political figures. Vassilev also discussed Peevski's role as the main coordinator of the South Stream project, alleging his involvement in various corrupt dealings. 

The hearing was marked by strong-worded exchanges, particularly from MRF's Hamid Hamid, who dismissed Vassilev's credibility and criticized the decision to hear his testimony via video link.

Timur Halilov MP (of Dogan's camp in MRF), expressed dissatisfaction that MRF was represented at the hearing by "persons who have been divested of confidence by the MRF honorary chairs and who do not speak for the MRF voters". He also said that Corpbank was not just a bank run case but "a symbol of the misuse of power, of impunity and the merger of political and economic power in the hands of a few". "That undermines people's trust in the state institutions," he said.

According to Halilov, Tsvetan Vassilev's testimony revealed serious facts that raise questions not only about the financial stability of the country, but also about the way law enforcement and anti-corruption bodies function. 

Halilov asked why the Anti-Corruption Commission has not reacted in this case, while in other cases it has been "most active", which he said speaks of a "selective approach and serving dependencies". "The lack of reaction in this case raises suspicions of double standards and a lack of will to fight corruption at a high level, Halilov said. 

"We call on the acting Prosecutor General to take action to ensure justice and restore the financial and moral detriment inflicted on Bulgarian society. We are looking forward to the reaction of the institutions," the MP said. We also call for timely action on the numerous reports of pressure and repression on businesses and officials in the local and central administration, he added.