One doesn’t need to be an expert in finances, in order to realize that the whole thing about the bankruptcy of the Corporate Commercial Bank /CCB/ proved to be yet another maneuver, aiming to steal the money of the average tax payer. This money went into the pockets of people and organizations, playing behind the scenes in Bulgaria. The bank bankrupted on 20 June 2014 and its owner Tsvetan Vasilev fled to Serbia where he has been residing ever since.

It was all obviously a scenario and today no one can disperse that suspicion that the CCB bankruptcy had been intended. However, as the society smells too many rats, some pacifier was thrown to it over the last few days with the idea of some peace and eventual justice in the future. More than curious facts were taken out in the light – over 180 judges and 100 prosecutors had kept money in the bank. Lots of names of politicians, MPs, mayors and municipal counselors were also on the list, along with state experts and their relatives – and all those people are obliged by the law to declare their property on an annual basis. A series of experts determined the CCB as the bank of magistrates and underhand dealings.

The reaction of the Supreme Judicial Council didn’t take too long. Its ethic committee stated that it would demand from the Bulgarian National Audit Office to compare the income, declared by the magistrates with their CCB accounts. Minister of Finance Vladislav Goranov insisted on the other hand on the declassification of the Alix Partners company reports, hired to investigate CCB last summer. A few days before the same minister had firmly opposed that declassification, because “it would have a negative impact on the collection of receivables”. It is now turn of the National Audit Office to start checking the list published – followed later on by the State Agency for National Security, why not?

However, if you say A you have to be prepared to say B. This list of CCB customers might soon live its life, but it must be followed by the one that is much more important –who are the public and private companies and persons with unsecured loans granted by CCB. This is how the billions of the bankrupted institution are going to be traced. Thus the surrounding fog will dissipate and the Who syphoned off CCB? question will find its answer. In case this happens, there are going to be both financial and political cataclysms – the tax, audit and special services will simply go crazy, not knowing where to start from.

As some observers say, the CCB bankruptcy was yet another behind-the-scenes redistribution of economic resources and we have already witnessed several of those after the 1989 fall of the communist regime. The players are many and high-ranking ones. Those will do their best to prevent the revealing of the whole truth around the CCB collapse. If this happens, the grounds of the underhand dealings and corruption will be undermined – and those seem to manage the political, economic and justice systems of this country.