Friday, Jul 10, 2015
Muscat: Oman State General Reserve Fund said it will not hesitate to retrieve its money that it invested in Bulgarian Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank).
The comments came after the General Reserve Fund of the State of the Sultanate, the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, filed a lawsuit against the Bulgarian government because of the collapse of the Corporate Bank, according to Reuters.
The fund issued a statement saying that the fund does not wish to comment on anonymous information, while confirming that it is closely watching all developments relating to the status of the Bank in Bulgaria.
The fund added that it works on everything it can to protect its assets, including resort to legal means.
Corpbank represents much less than 0.5 per cent portion of the investment portfolio of the fund. It stressed that the vast majority of its investments achieved strong gains over the past years.
The average annual return achieved by the fund is estimated at 7.5 per cent annually.
Oman’s State General Reserve Fund owned a 30 per cent stake in the Balkan country’s fourth-biggest lender, which collapsed due to a bank run and shut down by the central bank.
News of the legal action came as a Bulgarian parliament commission on Wednesday accused the main shareholder of running Corpbank as a pyramid scheme under the lax supervision of the central bank and the intelligence service.
Corpbank’s main owner, Bulgarian tycoon Vassilev, has been charged with embezzlement since the bank run and an independent audit ordered by the central bank forced Corpbank to write off nearly two-thirds of its assets.
A consortium of investors, including the Omani fund had submitted proposals for rescuing Corpbank in October, but a month later, the central bank stripped the lender of its licence and ended any chance of a turnaround.
“The arbitration is in European courts”, said a source at the fund, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Our demands are to get the book value of our investment as per the day the bank was stopped as well as interest,” the source added, declining to give further details.
The Bulgarian finance ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The run on Corpbank started after reports of shady deals at the lender surfaced and amid a public dispute between Vassilev and a business rival. Vassilev, who is in neighbouring Serbia and awaiting a court decision on whether to extradite him, has denied any wrongdoing and said the bank run was a plot hatched by his competitors in collusion with some state officials.
Oman State General Reserve Fund was established in 1980, as a sovereign wealth fund owned by the Government of Oman, seeks to achieve long sustainable revenues through an extended investment portfolio in more than 25 countries around the world.
By Fahad Al Mukrashi Correspondent
Gulf News 2015. All rights reserved.
