The head of the Prosecutor General’s Office Eduard Harunjen said he is not satisfied with the way in which the “US$ 1 billion case” is being investigated given the results achieved so far. According to him, the theft of the U$ 1 billion was committed not during a day, but during years. Hundreds of foreign banks from abroad were involved and a part of the money reached offshore zones. The issue was developed in the talk show “Fourth power” on N4n TV channel, IPN reports.

“The theft of the U$ 1 billion was not committed during a day. I said this for several times in Parliament and in the parliamentary commission. This was committed during years. That’s why the investigation was divided into periods – bank management period; period during which the administration of the bank was changed; investigations covering decision makers of a number of ministries and state agencies who neglected particular things one way or another,” stated the chief prosecutor.

According to him, the prosecutors did their best. There were analyzed several tens of applications for rogatory commissions in different states as this crime covered not only Moldova. “There were reports that the head of a bank branch entered the treasury office with a car, loaded several sacks of money onto this and left. This happened when there was the biggest fuss around Banca de Economii. We identified three situations of the kind,” stated Eduard Harunjen, noting the given persons took by 4-5 million lei and disappeared. Some of these were caught and convicted, but not all the money was recovered as they managed to spend a part of it.

The chief prosecutor said there were many parties, participants in the criminal scheme, including firms from Russia, hundreds of banks from abroad, including offshore areas. “Such offenses cannot be investigated by staying in Moldova. There were submitted rogatory commission requests and some of these were responded, while others were not,” stated Eduard Harunjen, noting based on these rogatory commissions, some of the countries opened own investigations as they classed the actions taken on their territory as money laundering or thefts.

As to the Second Kroll Report, Eduard Harunjen said that if this is ever published, society will be definitely shocked by the information it contains. It wasn’t published because Kroll didn’t consent to this. “What we should now do is to ask for permission. We already suggested that the National Bank should have discussions with the company and ask for its consent for publishing the report as the President requested this. We do not want to be suspected of hiding something or of not wanting to shed light on this report.”

Eduard Harunjen noted the Second Kroll Report could contain new names from the former government, but he didn’t read this report and only discussed it with prosecutors. “The Kroll report will inevitably be placed on the table of the parliamentary commission and this will decide what names to make public,” stated the chief prosecutor.