BULGARIA’S CHIEF PROSECUTOR ADDRESSES EU INSTITUTIONS OVER THE EXTRADITION OF FORMER CORPBANK MAJORITY SHAREHOLDER

Bulgaria’s prosecutor’s office said on 9th of February that it requested assistance from two EU institutions in relation to the difficulties in securing the extradition of the former majority shareholder of Corporate Commercial Bank, Tzvetan Vassilev from Serbia.

For nearly one year and a half, the Bulgarian authorities have not received any official reply from Serbia on the extradition of the banker Tzvetan Vassilev, who had been accused of having siphoned off about 206 million leva from CCB and misamanagement.

Since September 2014, Bulgaria’s prosecutor’s office has not received any official information from the Serbian authorities regarding the extradition request. To that end, Bulgaria’s chief prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, addressed the General Secretariat of the Council of Europe and the European Committee on Crime Problems about the difficulties encountered in relation to the application of the European Convention on Extradition. And called for urgent consideration of the case.

The spokesperson of the chief prosecutor, Rumyana Arnaudova, says that it is an obligation of all member states that signed the European Convention on Extradition to inform the requesting party of the decisions of their national courts with regards to the extradition. The lack of answer is a procedural obstacle for the finalization of this investigation, she added.

The letter sent by Bulgaria’s chief prosecutor points that several reminding letters have been sent to the Serbian Minister of Justice, as well as a second extradition request with new evidence attached to it, but remained unanswered.

The most recent public information on the case was from March 2015, when it became clear that the first instance court in Belgrade ordered Vassilev's extradition to Bulgaria, but the Court of Appeals ruled to overturn the decision of the first instance court and returned the case to the court that made the extradition order for it to reconsider.

Meanwhile, the receivers of CCB released on February 9 a list of public figures, including the names of politicians, magistrates and parties, which had deposits in CCB or received loans from the bank. The list was published nearly a year and a half after the bank was declared insolvent.

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