Transparency International’s expert Veaceslav Negruta is sure that the Prosecutors and the financial investigations company Kroll have a beneficiaries’ list for the bank fraud, because the presence of offshore companies in the first and second reports from Kroll means that their beneficiaries were also looked for.
In an interview with RFE/RL Modlovan Service, the former finance minister also said that in order to understand if Kroll did a good job investigating the fraud, one should remember that it’s a private firm that delivers exactly the amount of work agreed under the contract. “So the terms of reference and the contract signed with this firm determine the scope of its work. This means that if anyone wanted to sabotage the investigation from the beginning, the easiest way to do it was by limiting the terms of reference and the scope of the investigation and requesting only the most suitable information.”
“I’d like to point out that before we can make a judgment about how good or bad the Kroll reports are, we should see a number of important documents, which haven’t been made public. First, it’s the ToR. We do not know what was it exactly that the National Bank of Moldova asked Kroll to find out. If this document were made public, it would be much easier for us to understand and evaluate the quality of Kroll’s work and if it was able to answer all of the NBM’s questions,” noted the expert, adding that the same is true for the unpublished contract, which could answer the question if the reports were good value for money.
“Regardless, let me underline that the first and second Kroll reports are two key documents that give us a certain understanding of everything that happened then,” said Veaceslav Negruta.
“What is certain is that the authorities, the law enforcement in particular, have all the information and a clear picture of what happened. The question is why then they haven’t done a proper investigation into the bank fraud. At the same time, why did they try to give a certain interpretation and direction to some things and sit on others? Everything that was described in the first Kroll report is based on the information provided by the National Bank. So if there hadn’t been a first Kroll report, we wouldn’t have known that in fact a certain group of people had consolidated, owned and controlled three banks. The National Bank knew about it,” commented the expert.
According to Veaceslav Negruta, while the first and second Kroll reports are a specific read destined for a particular lot like the prosecutors and financial specialists, what matters for the general public is the list of beneficiaries. “This reluctance to disclose the list is perhaps meant to protect some of the beneficiaries who might find this sort of publicity somewhat uncomfortable,” said Veaceslav Negruta.
