Intercapital depositors picket Parliament building

About 100 depositors of the financial concern Intercapital, which went bankrupt in 1997, picketed the building of the Moldovan Parliament on January 22, Info-Prim Neo reports. The protesters demanded that the authorities observe the Law of July 28, 2005 which obliges the Government to restore the deposited money to depositors from the resources obtained from selling public property. Nestor Samofalov, chairman of the national public organisation “Robbed and Swindled Depositors of Intercapital”, said that he intends to sue the Government because it did not find a possibility for solving the problem within two months, as stipulated by the law. At the same time, the depositors seek the creation of a commission that would examine the activity of the Prosecutor’s Office in the case of Intercapital. Nestor Samofalov considers that this commission must include representatives of independent mass media that will inform the public opinion about the found irregularities. The protesters say they do not have great hope that they will get their money back and are ready to resort to desperate measures such as road blockades. While the depositors have expected to obtain the money, 800 of the about 2,000 depositors died, while the others are aged around 70, says one of the protesters. The Government wants all the depositors to die so as not to refund the money, Andrei Conschi said. In 1997, when the concern Intercapital went bankrupt, it had about 30 million lei deposited in its accounts by over 2,000 people that formed an association of cheated depositors. In 2002, the Court of Buiucani district found the director of “Intercapital” Vasile Caras guilty of embezzling funds in extremely large amounts and sentenced him to 25 years in a maximum-security prison, in the absence of the accused. Caras, who was hiding in Romania, was arrested in late 2005.