On 10 August the Registry Agency announced the suspension of access to the Commercial Register. One of the country's most important databases became unavailable to the many people who work with it – company owners and managers, lawyers, notaries, bank officers.
The authorities’ prolonged silence only heightened the panic among business owners. When information did appear, it turned out that no one would be held responsible for what had happened.
So what happened? A large volume of information covering a long period disappeared, and there is no certainty that it can be restored. This concerns an entire database covering commercial enterprises and legal entities that do not carry out economic activity.
Consequences
Problems will be faced by every company whose representatives have not managed to obtain a certificate of current status recently. At present it has become impossible to register new companies or to enter any changes in the operations of existing ones. It is impossible to conclude and register transactions or to deal with administrations, banks, the judiciary, notaries and so on.
Accordingly, new opportunities for fraud are appearing. For example, if a company has changed its manager and this fact is not recorded anywhere, the door is open to abuse.
Business owners cannot withdraw money from their own bank accounts to pay salaries or insurance contributions. As a result, it is not only company owners who suffer, but ordinary employees too – practically the whole population of the country.
The most unpleasant part is that no one knows how long it will take to resolve the problems. The authorities can say nothing definite on this. In lawyers’ opinion, what has happened can be classified as force majeure, which means those affected have no chance of obtaining any compensation for their losses through the courts.
Causes
Nothing is currently known about the reasons for the disappearance of the data. The official version is server problems. Opinions have been voiced that what happened is an attempt to conceal some serious violations.
The head of the Registry Agency, Zornitsa Daskalova, stated at a briefing devoted to the problem that no data has been irretrievably lost, and that no abuses should be expected while it is being restored. Nevertheless, Ms Daskalova was unable to answer any questions about the reasons for such a failure.
According to former Minister of Justice Hristo Ivanov, the loss of the database points to an unprecedented crisis in the national security system. In the view of IT experts, the failure was the result of attempts to delete certain information from the register. There is also a version that the problem is simply that the Agency’s system could not cope with the enormous volume of information.
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