Bulgaria’s insolvent bank CCB lists creditors
Bankruptcy receivers at Bulgaria’s Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB), which was declared insolvent by a court ruling earlier this year, published a list of the lender’s creditors on August 18.
CCB was Bulgaria’s fourth-largest lender by assets when it sought to be put under the central bank’s special supervision in June 2014, later losing its banking licence after a write-down after an audit found it held mainly impaired assets, and the receivers had repeatedly postponed deadlines in order to compile the full list of creditors, which runs to 173 pages.
The state deposit guarantee fund was, as expected, the largest single creditor after it paid out 3.65 billion leva (about 1.87 billion euro) in guaranteed deposits since December 2014.
Three banks – state-owned Bulgarian Development Bank, Germanys Commerzbank and France’s Societe Generale – were owed a total 103 million leva and were guaranteed repayment.
A number of state institutions were on the creditors list, including the privatisation agency with 10.7 million leva and the National Revenue Agency with 3.2 million leva, as were several state-owned energy companies – Bulgarian Energy Holding was owed 14.7 million leva, as well as state electric utility NEK with 15 million leva, gas grid operator Bulgartransgaz with 60 million leva, electric grid operator ESO with five million leva and Kozloduy nuclear power plant with 4.5 million leva.
Sofia municipality-owned heating utility Toplofikatsia Sofia was one of the largest creditors with 90 million leva, and Sofia Airport was owed 28.6 million leva.
Among public figures, Movement for Rights and Freedoms honorary chairperson Ahmed Dogan was listed with a deposit of 694 000 leva, but Culture Minister Vezhdi Rashidov – who had earlier said he had two million leva deposited in CCB – and former prime minister Ivan Kostov, who also publicly said he had a deposit in the bank, were absent, leading local media to speculate that they had signed cession agreements with CCB debtors to sell their deposit claims.
The list published only includes claims accepted by the bankruptcy receivers, which can be appealed by creditors within 14 days of the list’s publication.
(For full coverage of the CCB situation from The Sofia Globe, click here. Photo of CCB-branded ATM, with “out of service” sign: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
