The abridged version of the second Kroll report was published just before the holiday season in order to minimize its impact, suggests the DA Party. Its leadership told a press conference today they believed the report failed people as it provided few findings for the price and in particular failed to name the “real beneficiaries” of the 2012-2014 bank fraud.
Otherwise, the party’s leadership said the published summary confirmed a few conclusions contained in the first report, and namely that “the main tool of the beneficiary of the biggest economic crime in Moldova’s history is Ilan Shor”.
Another conclusion as understood by DA is that “the heist of the century was covered-up and encouraged at the highest levels of government”. “On 7 November 2014, pressured by Andrian Candu and Dorin Dragutanu, the Leanca Cabinet adopted the classified Decision no. 938 to provide 9.5 billion lei in state guarantees to the National Bank to lend the three banks before the money was stolen”, the party said in a statement.
Until 26 November 2014, Banca de Economii had offered loans to an overall amount of $838.5 million and Banca Socială had lent a total of $956 million. It was only after that, DA noted, that the National Bank ended this by establishing special administration.
“This unprecedented crime would not have been possible if not for the criminal inter-oligarchic agreement across the political class and implemented by the leaders of the political parties governing at the time, and who controlled both officially and unofficially all the public agencies in the country; and with the complicity of the so-called parliamentary opposition”, says DA, “All the operations to convert and misappropriate the money through the banking system occurred as the National Bank, the National Anticorruption Center, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security and Intelligence Sevice looked on impassively after being subordinated to the Democratic Party and personally to Vlad Plahotniuc”.
The party is urging morally upright prosecutors to investigate the November 2014 Government Decision. DA is also encouraging civil society and people at large to resume protests to make the government publish the second Kroll report in its entirety and complete without further delay the trial against Ilah Shor, with all court sittings made public.
