NRA wrote off 3 billion of debts of companies in October

Nearly BGN 3 billion of corporate debts were written off by the National Revenue Agency in October this year. This can be seen by comparing the public lists of debtors published by the agency for September and October this year. In one month, 972 companies were deleted as debtors. Fisk is no longer looking for the whole BGN 2 956 799 345,43. Data for several consecutive months have been processed by the BRRD team and are available in a public search engine. Beneficiaries of coronasubsidies and EU funds are found among the debtor companies.

Of this amount, BGN 2.7 billion belong to 771 companies that do not have assets on which the NRA has imposed collateral. This means that the money is simply written off as uncollectible. It is not known whether the remaining 216 million are also uncollectible or have been collected from the realisation of collateral, which would be a great success. However, the fact that the NRA does not boast of a breakthrough in debt collection is telling.

The massive debt write-off was expected, but it is a mystery why it is happening now in October. In 2019, an audit of the Court of Auditors quoted by the newspaper. It is now understood that the agency is set to wipe out £20 billion of debts accrued from concealed or undeclared liabilities identified in audits and categorised as difficult- or uncollectible. This includes deleted traders, companies transferred to clowns, etc. without property and assets.

Over half of the written-off receivables were charged interest for late payment. The monthly interest for unpaid debts is about 1% of the accumulated amount due.

In 2018, the civic association BOETC revealed that the collected and siphoned VAT exceeded 16 billion levs and submitted signals to the prosecutor’s office and OLAF.

The evidence suggests that this is now a campaign write-off. A 2016 statutory amendment allows debts to be extinguished ex officio by prescription after 10 years. It is not clear why this happened in October and not at the end of the year or at the end of each month. The report on the NRA debts from the last few months shows that they have been increasing smoothly from May to September.

• October 2020 – BGN 10 297 055 880,11
• September 2020 – 13 118 572 123,95
• August 2020 – 13 026 345 758,02
• July 2020 – 12 919 796 248,18
• June 2020 – 12 781 511 023,95
• May 2020 – 12 418 571 587,39

The RDB also has the April 2020 file, but it contains a large number of duplicates that distort the accurate picture of amounts due and therefore the data is not included in the analysis. Unfortunately, the agency does not maintain a public archive of previous months’ lists.

Hoops of “straw faces”

The undisputed champion in terms of debts that have already been written off is the company International Marketing Export Import with over 167.6 million leva. It was deleted, the last owners being the persons Emil Methodiev Nikolov и Tsvetan Atanasov Damyanov The name of the previous owner until 2008 is also found in the Commercial Register. This is Rumyana Blagoeva Andonovawhich registered the company in 2003. Its assets include another company with a 5 million debt to the NRA, which was also written off by the statute of limitations.

A check in the BRRD’s related parties system shows that Andonova and Damyanov are from a circle of “straw men” linked to debtor companies, while Nikolov is rather accidentally brought in as an intermediate buffoon.

The NRA requested bankruptcy proceedings against International Marketing Export Import only in 2016, when the company’s debts were 95 million leva, of which 44 million in interest. This was after a tax audit certificate was served in 2012. The company was introduced to the lists of large debtors on 03/2018. But since the court held that the bankruptcy was a fact of 2008, the statute of limitations for this record debt had already expired.

After the October write-off of International’s debts, the new champion is the Kurdzhali company Korina BG with 161 million leva in debt. The owner of “Korina BG” is “Fortuna Trade” from Gabrovo, behind which stands the person Hristian Todorov Balkandzhiev. Other companies related to him have also accumulated debts to the NRA. Corina BG’s debt swelled between May and June by BGN 58 million. The company was cited in a conviction by the Sliven District Court for tax crimes committed by A.D., a representative of the company Kronos. It is clear from the court’s reasoning that Korina BG issued false invoices.

A check in the BRRA’s related parties system shows that Ivan Hanchev and Yosif Yosifov, who are related to Balkandzhiev, manage dozens of companies with debts to the NRA.

None of the persons listed so far is aware of any criminal prosecution for particularly large fiscal damage or of any prosecutorial investigation of their principals.

Coronasubsidies and EU funds for NRA debtors

Cross-referencing the data on the recipients of subsidies for the effects of the Kovid-19 pandemic and the data on the debtors of the NRA reveals 11 companies with large debts to the fisc. The largest areBord(BGN 884 664,72 debt, BGN 38 292,91 subsidies) andPerota Holding(BGN 304 783,82 debt, BGN 26 201,70 subsidies).

Of these 11 debtors, 3 are on the list of companies without any assets to secure their debts to the NRA for a total of over BGN 1 million. –“Consumer cooperative “Yojnoveniya“,“Asenitsa-1080” and“Uni Trevel“.

In addition, BRRD’s search engines detect recipients of EU funds, contractors of awarded EU projects and holders of public procurement contracts. Among the debtors of the NRA there are many companies that received funds under the Rural Development Programme (RDP) managed by the State Fund for Agriculture and Rural Development (example here) and the Operational Programmes (example here and here).

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