Tsvetan Vasilev: BNB Not Willing to Discuss Options to Restructure Corpbank

Bulgaria's central bank is resorting to "absurd" excuses to avoid carrying out its legal duties about Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank or KTB), its owner has said.

In a statement on his website, Tsvetan Vasilev also points out the bank is actually serving the interest of a coalition called "PPP", but stops short of revealing what stands for the abbreviation.

He also suggests "all available resources", including "prosecution... supervisors [and] auditors", are being used toward the goal of "ruining the financial institution".

The coalition is about to pave the way for the bank's liquidation and the plundering of its assets, Vasilev declares.

KTB is under special supervision conducted by the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) since June 20, when a bank run depleted its liquidity.

Vasilev also refutes earlier claims of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), which says the Vienna-based fund EPIC, reportedly representing the three major shareholders at KTB (Vasilev himself, the Omani State General Reserve Fund, or SGRF, and Russian VTB bank) does not actually include the Omani fund, the entity that owns nearly a third of KTB.

He accuses KTB's supervisors of dividing its credit portfolio into four parts (ranging between "best assets" and "worst assets"), ignoring the portfolio's specific structure on which "the successful and quick rise of the institution" was based in the past 14 years.

Citing examples of how the pillage of Corpbank is being prepared, Vasilev stresses he is ready to fight for his bank "until the end" and to go on with attempts to restructure the bank, reiterating this end has become the project of his life.

The banker says the consortium he earlier set up to work on the recovery of KTB will most likely try to inject capital (probably using Vasilev's own company Bromak) into the financial institution by paying back approximately BGN 2 B of loans in return for the ownership of some assets and projects financed by the bank. In his view, such a step could provide sufficient liquidity and would restore the level of capital back to what the regulator requires.

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