Bulgaria impounds assets of eight CCB officials
Bulgaria’s prosecutor’s office said on August 26 that the Sofia City Court impounded the assets held by eight officials of the Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB), including majority shareholder Tsvetan Vassilev.
The court order was issued on August 22 at the prosecutors’ request, the prosecution said, but gave no further details about court order or the estimated value of the impounded assets.
The prosecution’s statement is the latest update on the progress made by the ongoing investigation into the circumstances that led to CCB being put under Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) conservatorship on June 20.
Although formal charges are yet to be filed, Vassilev is suspected of siphoning off 206 million leva (about 105.3 million euro) from the bank with the aid of the other CCB officials.
In its statement on August 26, the prosecutor’s office gave a detailed breakdown of the measures undertaken to issue an international arrest warrant in Vassilev’s name, which the prosecutors announced earlier this month.
Vassilev is currently outside Bulgaria and his whereabouts are unknown, which is why a European arrest warrant in his name has been issued. His name has also been added to the list of wanted people in the Schengen information system and he is expected to be added to the Interpol wanted list shortly, the prosecution said.
Vassilev gave several interviews to Bulgarian media – reportedly from Vienna – in June and July, but has used his personal website to issue new statements in recent weeks. It is unclear whether he is still in Austria, with a report in a Bulgarian daily last week claimed that Vassilev was in Serbia, but the newspaper’s claims have not been officially confirmed.
(For full coverage of the CCB situation from The Sofia Globe, click here. Tsvetan Vassilev photo from his personal website, vassilev.bg)
