Bulgaria’s Dossier Commission names more credit millionaires with State Security backgrounds
Bulgaria’s Dossier Commission, the body charged by law with identifying people who were involved with the country’s communist-era State Security, has disclosed a new batch of credit millionaires with a secret service background.
By law, the commission identifies people who left bad debts of more than a million leva (about 500 000 euro) when their companies went insolvent or closed.
In a check of 465 people who led companies owing sums of this scale to United Bulgarian Bank, the commission found that 47 had been agents, collaborators or employees of State Security.
Some had been identified in previous checks of government and state institutions and private sector business associations. Checks into some people were continuing because of missing information, the commission said on October 9.
UBB is the successor to 23 banks as a result of a 1992 merger.
The commission also checked top management and executives at UBB, finding 14 former State Security people out of 201 checked, with checks not completed on 12.
After the law was amended under the former government of centre-right party GERB to enable the Dossier Commission to investigate credit millionaires, the commission also has identified a number of State Security people found in the management and supervisory bodies of banks.
These banks include those that have had name changes over the years and also absorbed previous banks.
In several cases, those identified had been at the top of predecessor banks, not the current ones.
Of International Asset Bank, founded at the end of the 1980s as Kremikovtsi Bank and later known as First East International Bank, the commission said that it had checked 57 people and found nine State Security agents or collaborators.
At Corporate Commercial Bank, first licensed in 1994, 24 people were checked and three former State Security people found.
The check of Allianz Bank was of one person, who turned out to be former State Security.
At SG Expressbank, which includes a number of former banks, 129 people were checked and 13 found, with an overlap of a previous identification at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
CIBank, which has its roots in the Bulgarian Russian Investment Bank in 1995 and has undergone name changes, had nine former State Security people among 67 checked, with two people still being investigated, according to the Dossier Commission.
At Piraeus Bank, of 37 people checked, six were found to have been with State Security.
At UniCredit Bulbank, the history of which encompasses about 30 banks, three former State Security were identified by the Dossier Commission.
MKB Unionbank had four State Security people among 26 checked by the commission.
Of 47 checked at Investbank, three were found, and at Citibank Sofia, of two checked, one was found, the Dossier Commission said.
(Photo: Marcin Rolicki/sxc.hu)
