The freshly released Kroll 2 Report fails to give an exact number for how much money was stolen in the bank fraud, and provides little detail about how exactly the money was stolen from the banking system. Also, it doesn’t contain an analysis of the legal framework, specifically how the law had been amended to facilitate the fraud, and fails to look at the actions or inactions of the supervisory bodies like the National Bank and the prosecutors, expert Sergiu Tofilat of the WatchDog.MD Community commented for IPN.
One explanation, according to Tofilat, is that the National Bank withheld some key information from Kroll. For example, this can be deduced from the fact that the report mentions some minor transactions to Victoriabank, while omitting entirely the high-profile case of Veaceslav Platon that involved tens of millions of euros. “I find it very odd that a high-profile and widely discussed case like Veaceslav Platon’s trial is missing in the Kroll report.”
The expert said he didn’t see any point in blacking out parts in the report, especially since some of this information appears to transpire elsewhere in the document. “It would have made sense to blur out some sections, names of companies or people, if the beneficiaries didn’t know what Kroll knows. But the beneficiaries know very well, because the prosecutors have been sitting on the report for quite a while. It wouldn’t surprise me if the National Bank coordinated (with third parties) what to reveal to Kroll.”
Another takeaway from the report is that the loans were issued very fast, bypassing many formalities.
During 2012-2014 the Shor Group received a total $2.9 billion worth of loans, which has led many media outlets to interpret this as the size of the damage done. Which is not accurate, says Tofilat, because, for example, the 2013 loans went to cover payments for the 2012 loans.
But the report fails to clarify this and give an accurate number for how much money was embezzled. If Tofilat were to calculate it, he would do it “very simply”: of the total loan portfolio on the date the National Bank put the troubled banks under special administration, the secured loans issued to “real” companies need to be subtracted to find out the amount of the “fraudulent” loans, which should give us a pretty accurate answer as to how much money was stolen.
As concerns the actions and inactions of the supervisory bodies, Sergiu Tofilat noted that back in the “preparatory stages” the National Bank failed to react to the 2012 purchase of Unibank stocks. In this case, 21 individuals and companies acted concertedly to buy stocks under 5% with borrowed money, and Sergiu Tofilat says “it’s impossible not to notice that something was fishy about this”. “Obviously it was a concerted takeover with the purpose of replacing the management”. In 2013 the same happened to Banca Socială, and the National Bank failed to intervene in both cases.
As for the list of beneficiaries, which Prosecutor General Eduard Harunjen claims he doesn’t have, Sergiu Tofilat says this can be verified simply: every time a document is handed over from one agency to another, an accompanying receipt indicates the number of pages. Parliament’s inquiry commission should look if there is any difference to locate where the list might be hiding. Alternatively, the commission could just ask Kroll.
