Dorin Dragutanu named central bank governor

Dorin Dragutanu became the new governor of the National Bank of Moldova. He was elected by the vote of the MPs of the Alliance for European Integration (AEI) on Friday, November 6. The parliamentary group of the PCRM did not take part in the vote, arguing the post of governor is very important, but Dragutanu is not a famous name in the financial-banking sector, Info-Prim Neo reports. Dorin Dragutanu was appointed to the post for a seven-year period. He is 35 years, is married and has two children. Since 2008 until recently, he had been the director of the audit department of the Serbian company PricewaterhouseCoppers. He started his career in 1996 at the commercial bank “Bankcoop”, the branch in Chisinau. During the last three years, he had headed important audit inspections in a number of banks in Moldova. He has also provided financial analysis services to investors from Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. The new governor knows English, French, Russian and Serbian. His candidacy was proposed by the Head of Parliament Mihai Ghimpu. The central bank's deputy governors will be named by the Parliament at the suggestion of the governor. Before Friday's sitting of the Parliament, the members of the AEI held a meeting and made Dorin Dragutanu's acquaintance. He made a good impression, said the leader of the Democratic Party Marian Lupu. Prime Minister and Liberal-Democratic MP Vlad Filat expressed the same opinion. Communist MP Oleg Reidman invoked that Dragutanu does not have 10 years' experience in the field and that the rich experience in auditing will not help him much in the financial-banking sector. Another Communist MP, Raisa Spinovschi, asked the governor why he indicated Romanian as the mother tongue in his CV. According to the MP, this shows that the candidate does not recognize the Moldovan language attested in the Constitution of Moldova. Communist MP Igor Dodon asked Dragutanu to name the central bank's objectives starting with tomorrow. “The maintenance of prices and the unblocking of the lending activity are the major objectives,” Dragutanu answered. Anatolie Zagorodnyi, another Communist MP, asked Dorin Dragutanu to be honest and say if he holds the citizenship of another state. He said he possesses information that Dragutanu travels to different countries with a passport that is not Moldovan. Dragutanu said he does not have the nationality of another state and that he legalizes his passports several times a year as he travels very often. The post of central bank governor was announced vacant on October 2, after the former governor Leonid Talmaci, who had headed the National Bank for 18 years, tendered his resignation on September 25.