Former Victoriabank president accuses Topa brothers of stealing stocks

16.09.2011 18:35
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2 minute(s)

Victor Turcanu, the former president of Victoriabank, claims that the brothers Victor and Viorel Topa stole stocks of the bank several years ago, and now that the rightful owners have been repossessed, they pretend to be the victims. “There were reports recently that these two brothers lost their assets overnight by being excluded from the list of the bank's shareholders. Which is not true. They have never, in the present or past, been among Victoriabank shareholders. The companies that they mentioned (in a press statement published on September 13) are in fact a couple of dubious firms that took over Victoriabank stocks through criminal methods, including fraud and terror, under the personal guidance of Viorel and Victor Topa”, stated Turcan at a press conference at Info-Prim Neo. Victor Turcanu said that, in the summer of 2007, Galina Proidisvet, the then vice-president of Victoriabank and his ex-sister-in-law, was forced, under the threat of violence against her family and herself, into signing a proxy which subsequently left Proidisvet without her stock in the bank. Similar methods were used in two other cases, according to Turcanu, who claims that the Topa brothers were behind the schemes. After living under “constant threats”, Galina Proidisvet eventually summoned her courage and in the spring of 2010 she took action in court to reclaim her shares, and the court annulled the proxy. According to Victor Turcanu, now the Topa brothers are trying to mislead the public opinion and pretend to be those defrauded, exploiting the recent wave of corporate raid incidents against some Moldovan banks. “There is no raid (in this case). The rightful owners just got their shares back, and nothing more”, said Victor Turcanu. Victor Turcanu is one of Victoriabank's founder, serving for 15 years as the bank's president until 2006. In the statement published by Victor and Viorel Topa earlier this week it was said that a fraudulent scheme was employed to dispossess a group of shareholders, including them, of 22.58% stock with voting rights in Victoriabank.