The money stolen through fraudulent bank schemes can be recovered, considers economic and political analyst Victor Gurau, who heads the Center for Strategic Research and Monitoring “Alternative for Moldova”. According to him, if this money was taken back from the offshore companies to which it was transferred, the exchange rate of the Moldovan leu could be stabilized. In a news conference at IPN, the analyst expressed his indignation at the fact that only two persons involved in the bank frauds have been held accountable so far.
“The state must create the instruments needed to recover the transferred money, which is the liquidity,” stated Victor Gurau.
According to him, the place of Ilan Shor, as of all those involved in this case, is near Vlad Filat, which is in jail. “Given that I, with my capacities identified those offshore firms to which the money from Banca de Economii was transferred and make public their names, I think the state institutions have the ability to trace them and know very well from where they can get the money back,” stated Gurau.
He noted that the IMF report showed the process of robbing Banca de Economii (BEM) started in 2009 and could have been stopped in 2013. “Then, the costs that the people must cover now didn’t amount to tens of billions of lei. They totaled then about 700-900 million lei, as the Parker report of the IMF showed. But this process was intentionally blocked because they wanted to implement the scenario that was prepared long before,” said the analyst.
Victor Gurau stated that the damage sustained due to bad loans comes to 5 billion lei. “If this money hadn’t been provided as loans and had been invested in state securities, at the lowest interest rate, about 500 million lei would have been earned,” he said.
He expressed his indignation at the fact that the National Anticorruption Center focuses on businessmen, but should also hunt the ‘sharks’, the persons holding high-ranking state posts who were obliged to correctly manage the state property, including the state-owned holding in the BEM.
“During one day, the money from the BEM went through Banca Sociala and a series of offshore firms and finally reached other offshore firms. It was a sum of about 13 billion lei, 6 billion lei of which was from the BEM. The transfer was made with the signature of former Premier Iurie Leanca. It is disdain when they say that Veaceslav Negruta, Veaceslav Ionita and other participants in the process are victims as these formed part of this process during many years and served those interests,” stated the analyst.
According to Gurau, the BEM case is closely related to the leasing out of the Chisinau International Airport.
