The second group of challenges, with which 2014 will undoubtedly be remembered, includes those events that put the very resilience of the banking system to the test. A point was even reached where questions were raised in the public space about the BNB effectiveness, in particular the banking supervision thus far exercised. The events in question started with the severe liquidity attack against several banks in the middle of the year. 2014 will go down in history also with the huge misappropriations of depositors’ money, malpractices of governance and breach of regulations revealed in the second half of the year in the fourth largest bank in the country – “Corporate Commercial Bank” AD (KTB). BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The KTB case was finally resolved with the effective application of the statutory guarantee on deposits. By coincidence, exactly today, 4 of December 2014, the long-awaited payment of guaranteed deposits with KTB has started. The depositors in this bank had no access to their deposits for a very long time. The central bank truly wished to see the KTB issues resolved in the shortest time possible. Unfortunately, as it is well known, with a large part of the documentation missing and the absence of legal means for quick restructuring of KTB, voluminous actions were needed to restore the credit files in KTB. Gathering this information was a necessary condition for the independent auditors to perform a complete analysis and assessment of KTB assets.
We have proved how our country, business and society have a strong institution they can rely on as a pillar of stability and for protecting the long-term public interest, an institution that does not give in to pressure and opportunistic interests. On a day like this, when we normally weigh up past events, our thoughts could go further back in time, long before the worries of this passing year. Some events can often be more wisely judged when looked at from a longer historical perspective. If we take such a look back into the 135-year history of the BNB, we would see many examples demonstrating the strength of our central bank and its insusceptibility to coteries’ intrigues and shallow trivial debates (which only absorb energy from the public creative resource, before vanishing in time). But our history has witnessed obscurantist episodes too, when the BNB was suppressed to obey political or other temporary interests. The implications of such interventions have always been tragic for the country. Here is one brief example. On the famed date of 9 September 1944 the BNB Governing Council set a “buying” rate for the Soviet rouble (15 levs for 1 rouble) after being instructed on the telephone by the then Minister of Finance. Two days later, on 11 September 1944, the government ordered the BNB to stop buying the  2  Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision of 14 September 2012.