A week after Bivol’s publication on suspicious loans of First Investment Bank (FIB) to offshore companies that raise doubts about draining of the private lender, the editorial office received an official letter from the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC). The letter was sent by the FSC’s Chairman Stoyan Mavrodiev. In a demanding tone, the letter is asking our media to disclose the sources of the information we published and gives us a deadline of three days to answer. The letter itself was signed by the Vice-Chairman of the Commission, Vladimir Savov. Bivol will decide, after consulting with its lawyers, whether to make public and without censorship the letter itself.

We will provide detailed information to the FSC with pleasure, but with a great deal of confusion. We assume that the FSC has been alerted by two publications in Bivol regarding our correspondence with the central bank (Bulgarian National Bank, BNB) on FIB, because they cite them by name and ask for additional information on them. If the Commission actually acted because of our articles, they could not have missed our subsequent investigations with specific documents, facts, dates and evidence, leading to suspicions about draining of FIB by connected persons and companies. Thus, if this is the case, the letter itself would be pointless because it requests from us information that was published already and has been on the site for a week now, together with all the irrefutable proof.

FSC could quite legally take it from there, and only require formal validation from us, if this is necessary for the procedure. Therefore Bivol openly declares that the requested additional information needed by the Commission for its supervision and investigation is available. We do not intend to hide our sources of information either, because they are open and public and can be found in the public registries, such as is the Trade Registry. Naturally, had the FSC requested information about confidential sources, it would have received a polite but firm refusal, however, this is not the case.

Nevertheless, it is important for Bivol that finally a responsible institution in this country focused its attention on the publications. We are encouraged that this is done by a supervisor who has experience with offshore property. Stoyan Mavrodiev is known to law enforcement as the person who allegedly registered the offshore companies of drug lord Evelin Banev AKA Brendo, as well as for his relations with Rumen Nikolov AKA The Pasha, from whom he has purchased an apartment (Mavrodiev, himself, claims that he had not seen the Pasha when he made the purchase).

These contacts and skills of the Chairman of the Commission give hope that the connections, exposed by Bivol and ending in offshore companies with unclear ownership, can be fully unraveled. As journalists and citizens, however, we want to express our position that overseeing the operations, described in our publication, should be done BEFORE, and not AFTER media start dealing with them.

Bivol is again publishing here (in Bulgarian) the links to all public documents, which we released on the site earlier, for the convenience of supervisors and the prosecution. They can be found in the Registry Agency as well, under the documentation for the respective company.

It is surprising that the Honorable Commission is requesting from us the personal data of the editorial team and details of the process of publication. All publications signed with the name Bivol are editorials and a collective work of our team. How we do our work is our internal, company secret, which we refuse to disclose without a Court decision, because we don’t think that we are guilty of anything. As a media, Bivol has published all information properly, with credible evidence, and it should be a priority for the investigators to check it, instead of our personal data and internal editorial policy!

As a sign of goodwill will provide the information requested by the FSC about our correspondence with BNB, mostly because we have faith that BNB, itself, will provide the full and authentic one as well, without edits.

Additionally, all evidence in the said FIB case that is available to us will be systematized and submitted to the prosecution in the coming days. We also have additional future investigations in the subject, which will be completed and published soon. After we gather everything together, it will be submitted for verification to the institution which is empowered to do so and to advise whether the law has been breached or not. We believe that data on the abuse of taxpayers’ money are serious and deserve preventive criminal investigation, not one that looks like an “after death the doctor” as it was in the case of failed private lender Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB or KTB).

Bulgaria is actually in a situation of humanitarian crisis, although nobody dares to say it aloud. We cannot afford the luxury of another banking crisis that could put us in the spiral of national catastrophe. The price tag of the “big robbery” of CCB has reached by now several billion levs and presumably, it will cumulatively and proportionally increase over time. Meanwhile, the negative and fatal results are being felt painfully by our society, especially through the tragic situation in public services. Under the laws of the plutocracy-mafia system in Bulgaria, precisely the State / society have to pay the “bills” of oligarchic mega-thieves, who use banks’ money to hoard feudal property and power.

Documents from the Investigation, Grouped by Companies

Consult Valpet

Loan of 56 million euro in 2011

Loan of 16 million euro in 2013

Annex for the loan of 56 million euro in 2014

Annual Report 2013

Nadin Metals Trade

Loan for 53 million euro in 2011

Loan for 9 million euro in 2013

Annex for the loan of 53 million euro in 2014

Annual Report 2013

Eltrade

Loan for 59 million euro in 2011

Loan for 6 million euro in 2013

Annex for the loan of 59 million euro in 2014

Annual Report

Harmony 2012

Annex for a loan of 30 million euro

Loan for 13 million euro

Loan for 4 million loan euro

Finance End Consulting

Loan for 17.5 million euro

Loan for 3.4 million euro

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