Five top management members of the defunct Banca Sociala and the de facto manager of a debitor company will stand trial on fraud charges, as the prosecutors finished their investigation and issued formal indictments.
According to the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, in 2013 members of the Banca Sociala administration plotted a scheme to artificially improve the bank’s credit situation in violation of national and internal lending rules.
In particular, the bank’s board decided to offer a 68 million lei loan to a company to buy properties already mortgaged to the bank by another company. Little was paid back, and only after the bank sold the mortgaged properties. As a result, the bank lost 48 million lei. This was done in parallel with the offering of another 52 million lei to another company, which in reality didn’t exist, to buy some equipment from a company involved in the first case.
This feigned lending activity, prosecutors say, aimed to redirect the money taken by the seller of the equipment to make payments on previous loans. At the same time, the de facto manager of the companies involved in the scheme received a preferential 10 million lei loan which was never paid back.
The bank thus suffered a total loss of 126 million lei, the prosecutors estimated.
The suspects face fines ranging from 117,500 to 167,500 lei or prison terms from 2 to 7 years, in both cases with bans from certain managing positions for up to 5 years.