If the three banks – Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank – do not repay the loans provided by the National Bank of Moldova to them, this debt will be transformed into internal public debt, the governor of the National Bank of Moldova Dorin Dragutanu said in a news conference on May 7, quoted by IPN.
Dragutanu didn’t specify the size of the debt, but said that the figures reported by the media are not correct and the ‘real figure’ is influenced by the volume of deposits in lei withdrawn from the given banks and by other factors. As regards the impact of the transformation of the unpaid loans into internal public debt, the governor said the sum will be divided up by years so that the budget incomes, with which the debt will be repaid, will not decrease so much and particular budget costs will not have to be reduced.
Dorin Dragutanu reiterated that the National Bank found out about the ‘suspicious’ transactions only after the three banks were placed under special administration. Until then, only the volume of particular transactions caused concern. “Such transactions were performed in the banking sector earlier as well, in 2009 and after 2009,” he stated.
As regards the Kroll report, Dragutanu said the central bank and the company reached an agreement to keep the data included in the report confidential from the very beginning. Asked how the fact that the Kroll report was made public will affect the National Bank’s relations with this company, the governor said Kroll will no longer take part in the contests held by the Bank and will not continue the investigations at the three banks.
A contest to select the international company that will perform the second stage of the investigation will be announced at the end of May.
