The Head of the EU Delegation to Moldova Pirkka Tapiola consider the situation in the financial-banking sector of the country is worrisome and a thorough investigation is needed so as to punish those who stole the money and to recover at least a part of the losses. According to the ambassador, a solution is to liquidate the banks involved in the theft, transferring people’s deposits to other banks, IPN reports.
On March 30, Pirkka Tapiola presented the 2014 European Neighborhood Policy Progress Report for Moldova, which shows that the country is confronted with serious problems in the financial sector that pose a risk to stable economic development.
The ambassador noted that the stealing of about 10 billion lei through Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank by different schemes and the fact that the authorities didn’t manage to prevent it in an effect manner can seriously affect the banking system.
“It’s now time to conduct a very detailed investigation and to punish those to blame, to try to recover what’s possible and structurally to make sure that such things will never happen again. The most probable way out of this situation is to liquidate these banks, transferring the deposits and guarantees, and this thing is very important because no citizen should suffer as a result of such a step. This step would mean the cleanup of the base and greater predictability for the persons who deposited money. Liquidating the banks does not mean that the people would lose the money. This would mean that the institutions that are badly managed will no longer exist,” stated Pirkka Tapiola.
The National Bank placed three major commercial banks (Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank) under special administration, representing about 30% of the total banking assets. The IMF and the WB recommended the country’s authorities to strengthen the central bank’s capacities to deal with banking crises, including by making amendments to the legislation. The recommendations were made during the assessment mission of February – May 2014.
