Approximately 200 criminal cases that concern the bank fraud were started during the last few years. A number of 28 criminal cases were sent to court. Eight of these refer to business entities, while the rest to private individuals. Conviction sentences were passed in eight of the criminal cases sent to court, Deputy Prosecutor General Ruslan Popov stated in the meeting of the parliamentary commission on national security, defense and public order that examined the PGO’s intermediary report on the investigation of the bank theft, IPN reports.
“These about 200 criminal cases that refer to the bank fraud concern the thefts committed in the national banking system starting with 2009 until 2014, primarily at Banca de Economii, Banca Socială and Unibank. Some of these cases were connected to the main case, while others were investigated separately,” stated Ruslan Popov.
He also said that the criminal cases were started over different components of the fraud, such as swindle, obtaining of loans by swindle, violation of lending rules, tax evasion, defective and fraudulent management of the bank and others. “The scheme of the offense is banally simple. All the money in 2009-2014, about five years, was stolen by providing nonperforming loans totaling about 42 billion lei. Of this sum, about 13.5 billion was stolen as it wasn’t relayed,” stated the deputy prosecutor general.
Based on the guarantees converted into state debt, the Government is to pay over 22 billion lei together with interest to the National Bank of Moldova. Over 2.3 billion lei of the stolen bank funds has been recovered so far. Assets to the value of over 1.2 billion lei have been sequestrated since June 2019. On January 31, 2020, the debts of the three banks under liquidation to the state budget totaled over 11.7 billion lei.
Ruslan Popov noted that over 5,000 financial-banking transactions that require the formation of rogatory commissions are currently under investigation. The prosecution bodies formulated 26 letters rogatory so far, but sent only eight of these. The applications concern such states as Latvia, the U.S., Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Monaco, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and other states.
