/ world today news/ The published lists of visitors to Tsvetan Vassilev in KTB raised a lot of questions, but the most important of them is that of the integrity and reliability of the protected information after the conservators entered the bank in the summer of 2014. The published lists, which were released by the circle around Delyan Peevski, were manipulated and their names were deleted, which was proven by the journalists on the “Bivol” website.
More dangerous, however, is the manipulation of the bank’s information array, which contains all traces of its condition until the organized attack that took place against it in June last year. More than once, we have informed our readers about the unlawful export of files, documents and other information by structures competing with KTB. A lot of documentation was brought out by the investigative bodies under pressure from the prosecutor’s office, which in Bulgaria is tantamount to their final loss. A few days ago, “Voices” received information about a much more serious risk to the KTB information system, caused by the conservators Stanislav Lyutov and Elena Kostadinchev eight months ago. For no reason, they decide to change the system where the KTB database is stored, which with a 90% probability means data loss. Especially against the background of the extremely incompetent and tendentious management of the two quaestors
With Order З-1960 of 28.08.2014, Stanislav Lyutov and Elena Kostadinchev ordered the replacement of the SAN and the implementation of a new version of the SiSoft software product at the same time.
SAN – Storage Area Network is a separate part of the network of an organization (in this case – a bank) that gives access to storage containing a set of databases.
In fact, in this case it is a matter of replacing the storage itself, on which the data from the bank’s main system is kept – data on customers, accounts, operations, the balances on these accounts, the terms of keeping the accounts, etc. This is a bank’s most sensitive information.
What does the customer data store need to replace with the closed KTB? The previous SAN was implemented only five years earlier, and such systems are not replaced that often. The current system is by no means morally obsolete. The only reason this happens is because the old system isn’t big enough. With a closed bank that will not develop further, this is also not an argument.
Every bank employee knows the risk of changing the system on which the data of the bank’s operations are stored – this is the biggest possible operational risk after the invasion of aliens and the eruption of the Vitosha volcano. It is entirely possible that data may be incompletely transferred, largely lost during transfer, modified – without human intervention (due to errors in the transfer program) or with human intervention.
The data in the KTB system is in a transparent form – any supervisor with sufficient powers has the opportunity to tap directly into the database and change whatever he decides. At this very moment, the information technology is managed by a person who is a confidant of the conservators – Stefan Shivarov. For these functions, he currently receives BGN 12,000 monthly remuneration, not counting the bonuses under the civil contract. According to this same contract, there are no commitments on the part of Stefan Shivarov to protect bank secrecy, there are no penalties, there are no commitments. His sole task is to ban all employees from using the Internet and monitor what employees are doing at their workstations. His authority in the field of information technology in KTB is limitless and includes, in addition to police functions, the selection of IT personnel, etc. (in December 2014, the conservators extended his authority to all operational activities in the bank). In reality, a person on a civil contract has replaced the head of the administration without having any responsibilities. Not coincidentally, the deposed head of IT left soon after. For the completeness of the picture, Shivarov is an industrial engineer by education and is the owner of companies for sports games (paintball), aviation services and what not, and by the way he also has two companies for training in the use of software products – generally operating at a loss .
At the operational level, the processes move under the “expert” leadership of Georgi Kortenski, whose only activity has been limited over the years only in the area of the accounting system. According to our sources, he was seen frequently at the Hotel Berlin well before the bank closed. His wife is a lawyer in a well-known capital firm and is closely connected with the South Stream project, but this has another bearing on the subject which is not the focus of our attention now.
The fact that after placing the bank under special supervision of all “unreliable” IT specialists, with the exception of 2-3 people from the circle around Kortensky, the access rights to the information in the accounting system were significantly cut or taken away. This is no accident, especially in light of the upcoming changes.
The changeover of the bank’s database repository begins simultaneously with the changeover of the accounting system version. This can be done either out of stupidity or deliberately, with a specific purpose. After the data is transferred to the new storage when the software is changed, it is always possible to get (intentional or accidental) errors in the transfer that cannot be detected because the old system and the new one are not exactly the same.
All directorates and branches of the bank received on 17.09.2014 an electronic message from Georgi Kortenski, apparently in command of the system replacement parade, in which he wrote: “The SAN system (the main server for the system) on which a software product is running is about to be replaced CSoft. A new release has been received from the developer to work on the new SAN. In this regard, it is necessary to launch tests of the new version. The test set-up was implemented on the new SAN system and there are no functional changes compared to the currently working version”.
In addition to the initially asked questions – what necessitates the change of repositories, systems, way of working at any time, new questions also appear. For example – what is new about the new version of the system, since it is functionally no different from the old one, and why would the entire bank test something that does not contain changes that affect the operational activity of these directorates and branches?
The change has been made. The quaestors continue with their illogical orders from the point of view of their real purpose. By order No. З-2679 of 22.10.2014, they ordered several serious changes to be made.
The first order is to the IT specialists and the credit specialists – to enter into the accounting system the impairments of the loans and provisions on the guarantees as calculated by the three consulting firms on the basis of the sample and the parameters given to them by the conservators themselves. The consulting firms themselves explicitly emphasize that these almost grocery accounts cannot be used for accounting purposes, respectively – for depreciation and provisioning. They know very well why – it’s just that these arithmetics have nothing to do with generally accepted accounting standards.
The conservators also ordered that all highly liquid securities be eliminated from the accounting system. It is no wonder why after this elimination 96% of loans are unsecured. It is strange that this manipulation did not spread to 100% of the credits. Perhaps for plausibility – on the example of the election results from the time of socialism, which also did not reach 100%.
The next order is for impairment in the accounting system of the securities in the bank portfolios. It is also the result of the task assigned to the consulting firms with a predetermined result – to increase the “hole”.
Employees are tasked with testing for impairment any remaining exposures that were not given to the consultants – clear evidence that the files and data provided to the consultants were manipulated and restricted.
The system has been changed, the data store has been changed, the value of the assets has been changed without really valuing them.
The indiscriminate and uncontrolled movement of original documents to consultants, prosecutors and investigators, employees of competing banks, etc. is alarming enough in itself. Coupled with the change in the system and the transfer of the accounting information, it can only increase the suspicions of manipulations on a particularly large scale.
The fact is that the information sent by the conservators to the Deposit Guarantee Fund was full of errors – wrong names, personal data, etc. That is why the queues of disgruntled customers wound up in front of the KTB headquarters instead of in front of the banks appointed to pay their deposits. A huge amount of bugs had to be fixed in order for people to get their money. Amounts were missing, customer data was missing, there were quite a few cases with old information that was surely updated in a timely manner in the bank’s database. These discrepancies of essential information between the customer data in KTB and the data provided to the Fund from the new repository and the new version of the accounting system raise a number of questions.
They are unlikely to receive an answer, just as our repeated inquiry about the qualifications of the quaestors and the legality of their decisions will not be answered. As well as our desire for the institutions in Bulgaria to provide at least one reliable proof of the hole of four billion BGN in KTB. Perhaps the replacement of the information system aims to do just that – to replace the truth in order to erase the traces of the real robbery of the KTB, which began after its closure, not before it.
#replaces #information #arrays #KTB
