EUObserver: Bulgaria Jittery After Bank Run 'Plot'

The article is from EUObserver

Bulgaria, already grappling with a severe political crisis, is now trying to deal with what the government has called an organised attempt to destabilise its financial system.

On Friday (27 June), Bulgarians lined up for hours to withdraw their money after receiving text messages, emails and alerts on social media that their deposits were not safe at the First Investment Bank, the country’s third biggest lender.

In response, President Rosen Plevneliev on Sunday held an emergency meeting with political party leaders and Ivan Iskrov, governor of the central bank.

After the five-hour meeting he emerged to say that the monetary board is unshakable, that companies’ and citizens’ money is safe and that Iskrov will “secure all necessary means and actions to guarantee banks’ stability”.

"There is no cause or reason to give way to panic. There is no banking crisis, there is a crisis of trust and there is a criminal attack,” said the president.

He also took the opportunity to call early elections on 5 October with the parliament to be dissolved on 6 August, after the EU vote in May severely weakened the governing Socialist party.

Bulgarians were not entirely reassured after the president’s words however. The queues in front of the First Investment Bank on Monday (30 June), although smaller than on Friday, were still numbering around 100 people.

Interior minister Tsvetlin Yovchev said electronic communication was an apparent tool in a misinformation campaign that is meant to shake the country.

Seven men have been arrested so far on suspicion of spreading “false, ill-intended information against Bulgarian banks to destabilise the banking system”...