Bulgarian Tycoon's Serbian Factory Faces Bankruptcy

Serbian workers at a glass company in Paracin, facing bankruptcy due to debts of around 50 million euros, are appealing to the government to help - and perhaps buy the firm.

"We've been informed that a pre-bankruptcy procedure was launched on May 5 … but we have had problems for a long time," Zivojin Matejic, from the union at Srpska Fabrika Stakla/ Serbian Glass factory, told BIRN.

The firm in Paracin was sold to Bulgarian businessman Tsvetan Vasilev in 2012 for 35 million euros. He bought 63 per cent of the shares in the company through a consortium of companies - Corporate Commercial Bank, Glass Industry and Rubin. The new buyer even got write-off of the company's debt to other state companies.

Meanwhile, Vasilev's bank, Corporate Commercial Bank, CCB, collapsed in 2014 in by far the biggest bank collapse in the history of Bulgaria.

Since then, the controversial businessmen has lived in Serbia, while the Bulgarian authorities seek his extradition for running a ponzi scheme and for illegally acquiring 206 million leva [103 million euros] in assets from the failed bank.

In February 2016, the Bulgarian Commission for Illegal Assets Forfeiture, submitted a claim to a Sofia Court to seize illegally acquired assets worth over 2.2 billion leva, or 1.1 billion euros. The subject of the record forfeiture claim was property assets located in Bulgaria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Greece.

Workers at Serbian Glass protested on Thursday, saying they now fear ending up unemployed if the state does not step in. 

"This is Gordian knot as nobody knows who owes whom, how much, or for what. Every day we hear a different figure," Matejic told BIRN on Friday, adding that the company debt stands at around 50 million euros, not...