When the Financial Supervision Commission makes public statements against a company, talks about referring the company’s activities to the Prosecutor-General and its advertising to the Council for Electronic Media, and legislation is rushed through Parliament against the same company, one would tend to suspect something is wrong.

The company in question must be deserving of suspicion, perpetrating confidence trickery, some other form of fraud, or worse. Perhaps it is one of those companies alleged in private conversations to be involved in money-laundering through the construction industry. Perhaps it is one of those powerful business groups said to regard murder and other forms of violence as part of legitimate business practice. Perhaps it is one of the other set of business interests, about which we have heard so much lately, behind the alleged widespread vote-buying.

As it turns out, it is none of these. The company is Hild, a recent entrant to the Bulgarian market, which arrived a few months ago to offer a new product involving the exchange of pensioners’ property rights for sums of money. In sum, the allegations against the company are that it is conducting business in the life insurance sector without the required permits. The company has rejected the allegations in the way that the commission framed them, and said that it intended to continue doing business.

Even though some Bulgarian media reports have described the company’s activities as a “scam”, no word has been uttered publicly to suggest that there is anything underhand or dishonest in the way that it has been conducting its business. Unless the authorities concerned have information that they have decided for whatever reason not to disclose, nothing has been heard publicly of pensioners being robbed of their meagre fortunes, nor of any other activities by the company that in a normal business environment would be regarded as illegal or unethical.

Should the authorities be aware of such abuses, they would do well to go public with them, because at the moment the case seems to be that the company in question may indeed be conducting business in a way that does not quite fit the legal and regulatory framework - raising the question whether it would be more appropriate for the company to change its ways or stop its operations altogether, or for the legislative and regulatory framework to be changed so as to accommodate a line of enterprise that is new to Bulgaria, yet at the same time, on the face of it no threat to anyone.

As noted, a considerable amount of energy has been devoted in recent days to moving against the company. After the media flurry about its activities and the clauses in its contracts, and the statements by the company to defend itself against all allegations, it has found itself with its very own clauses of legislation, written just for it. Again as noted, are the reasons for the vigour of this pursuit solely those stated publicly, or do the authorities have another motivation? It would be as well to know.

Such zeal on the part of the authorities to bring order to all aspects of business life must surely be applauded. If it is true that a motive for the enthusiasm displayed in moving against the company is a heartfelt desire to protect the pensioners of Bulgaria, that too must be welcomed. After all, it was those same pensioners turning out to protest at the scant pittance allowed them by the state that prompted the company to open here in the first place.