KTB – what happened?

The bankruptcy of Corporate Commercial Bank (KTB) is by far the largest in Bulgarian history. The assets found to have been lost and in need to be written off are valued at about BGN 4.22 bln, which equals approximately 5% of the country’s GDP. Translated to the size of the US economy, this would amount to nearly a trillion dollars.

The sum is larger than the annual government expenditures on defense and national security, on education, on health or on all other annual social payments, besides all pensions. It is approximately equal to the sum needed to pay all pensions in the country for half a year. The payment of the state guarantee to only the guaranteed depositors increased the total public debt of Bulgaria by almost 20%.
 
Three Bulgarian NGOs – Centre for Liberal Strategies, Transparency International – Bulgaria and Access to information Programme – decided to unite in a common effort pursuing a strategic goal to assist the creation of actual capacity of Bulgarian public institutions to serve the public interest genuinely and to decrease their susceptibility to capture and corruption.
 
This strategic goal will be pursued through the achievement of the following three objectives:

• to discover the mechanisms of state capture
• outline effective lines of reform in specific institutions and regulatory frameworks
• to contribute the debate for proposals to improve the operation of state institutions

All project results are available at: www.ktbfiles.com