In addition. the number of employees in the companies in question was cut by 60.8 percent, and over a half of the companies failed to implement development programmes.
Over one fifth of privatised companies filed for bankruptcy, according to a report which the State Audit Office has recently sent into parliamentary procedure.
The State Audit Office states that goals, defined by the Privatisation Act, have not been accomplished in majority of cases. The report is the result of the completion of the auditing process which the State Audit Office has carried out, in compliance with the said law which went into force in May 2001. Since then until last September, the Office audited the operations of 1,556 companies, which used to be socially-owned firms.
Only 75 companies have been cited as examples where their privatisation proved to be correct and successful.
A total of 345 companies declared bankruptcy in the meantime.
State auditors established that there were 1,936 examples of irregularities or wrongdoing during the privatisation. Of them, 721 cases require court proceedings, and in 271 cases there is well-grounded suspicion of serious white-collar crime.
Auditors have also established that the number of those on the payrolls of those 1,556 companies was slashed by 60.86 percent from 635,373 in late 1991 to 248,698 at the time when the auditing was conducted.