Expert of the “WatchDog” community Sergiu Tofilat said there are two connections between the bank fraud committed in Moldova and the Russian laundromat and these refer to the amendments made to the legislation to facilitate the given schemes and the inaction of state institutions. The issue was developed in the talk show “Important” on TVC21 channel, IPN reports.

According to him, the Prosecutor’s Office and the National Anticorruption Center had to prevent the laundromat scheme as fictitious transactions guaranteed by Moldovan citizens were performed as part of this. The biggest responsibility in the bank fraud is borne by the National Bank of Moldova as this had many instruments to prevent this fraud.

In the case of the laundromat, there were fictitious debts that were settled by court orders, while in the case of the bank fraud there were fictitious loans and economic activities.

The expert noted that in the bank fraud nonperforming loans were released to companies founded not long before these applied for loans. The National Bank could have realized that these were nonperforming loans and should have intervened.

As to the Russian laundromat, Sergiu Tofilat said more information will become available when the collected evidence starts to be examined. “We see that no one was punished on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. Cases started against involved judges were sent to court, but not these judges organized and managed this scheme,” he stated.

Recently, “WatchDog” published a study according to which about US$70 billion from Russian banks were laundered in 2010-2014 through Moldovan banks and courts of law, using illegal court decisions on false debts. The laundered money was transferred to a group of offshore companies with accounts in Western banks.