Controversial Bulgarian businessman and MP Delyan Peevski and two other MPs tabled draft amendments to the banks insolvency law to the parliament on October 26, claiming that if adopted they would reveal who robbed Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank).

In June 2014 Corpbank, then Bulgaria’s fourth largest lender, suffered a bank run that deprived it of liquidity. It was put under central bank administration and an audit showed a BGN3.75bn (€1.92bn) capital hole. As a result, the bank’s licence was revoked and it was declared insolvent in April 2015. The Bulgarian Deposit Insurance Fund (BDIF) has paid out BGN3.68bn in guaranteed deposits to Corpbank depositors since December 4, 2014.

The list of those indicted begins with Corpbank majority owner Tsvetan Vassilev, who has been a fugitive in Serbia since 2014 and has so far avoided extradition to his home country. It also includes Corpbank officials, two KPMG auditors and two former central bank (BNB) deputy governors.

“The draft law […] aims to end a plundering of assets acquired with funds from the insolvent Corporate Commercial Bank that is lasting more than three years, to restore unlawfully deleted collaterals to the bank, as well as to give its bankruptcy management the opportunity to restore the bankruptcy estate,” Peevski, a member of the ethnic-Turk Movement for Rights and Freedom (DPS), said in written statement on the motives for drafting the bill, published by Focus news.

It’s not yet clear how the law would help to identify who was responsible for the capital hole. 

Vassiliev has always maintained he did not rob the bank, and his representatives claim he was a victim of a plot organised by Peevski – once his business partner – and Bulgaria's chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov.

However, Jordan Tsonev, an MP from DPS was involved in preparing the bill, told local media that Corpbank was robbed after it went bankrupt due to a lack of adequate legislation and that Peevski’s participation in the initiative to improve the law proves he was not involved in plundering the bank, Mediapool reported.

Meanwhile, Vassilev has hired a US law firm to help him apply to be considered under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, a law passed by US Congress that allows the government to impose sanctions in retaliation for human rights abuses and corruption.