The Deputy Governor of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) refused to provide information about the legal basis, regulating the procedure for performing inspections on commercial banks in cases of alleged violations of the Credit Institutions Act and regulations for its implementation. The information was requested by the citizen Valeri Beluhov with a request filed in April 2012.
The refusal of the Deputy Governor of the BNB was grounded in the internal official information related to the operational preparation of the BNB acts and having no significance of its own.
With a decision No. 14540 as of November 20, 2012, the Supreme Administrative Court repealed the refusal and returned the request to the BNB for reconsideration. In their judgment, the justices pointed out that the request had been for official public information (Art. 10 of the Access to Public Information Act) which was contained in a legal act and the access should have been provided by the promulgation of the act. In that regard, the APIA, provides imperatively that if access to promulgated official information is requested, the respective public body should signify the edition in which it had been promulgated, the issue and the date.