The governor of the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) Dorin Dragutanu, when being questioned in Parliament, said the sum deemed to have been stolen from the three Moldovan banks is inflated. The stealing of a sum of 13.3 billion lei is now being probed. The probability that the stolen money will be recovered is very high because this sum, being large, surely left traces, IPN reports.
The governor said that when the NBM took over Banca de Economii (BEM), Banca Sociala and Unibank, these institutions had 2.7 billion lei in liquidity. The Kroll report makes reference to the same sum of 13.3 billion lei. This is the gross sum, the immediate losses, but when the securities are sold, the losses will decrease to about 9 billion lei, which is about 450 million lei.
Dorin Dragutanu noted that the money was taken out of the banks by a classical lending method. The given loans are provided by respecting apparently all the legal procedures. In time, the interest is not paid and they become bad loans. “Banca de Economii released bad loans almost permanently. The performance at Unibank and Banca Sociala was somehow good, but the profits at BEM have decreased continuously since 2007. Bad loans were granted before 2009, in 2009 – 2013 and after 2013,” he stated.
Speaking about the measures taken by the NBM, Dorin Dragutanu said they provided information to all the commissions of inquiry, sent dozens of letters to different bodies to inform them about the developments in the banking system, including the National Commission for Financial Markets, the Presidential Office and the Premier’s Office. “We sent multiple letters to the administration of the three banks, demanding that the situation should be remedied, as we saw that the operations they indicated as legal were risky,” he said.
He added that no money is now stolen from the three banks. These do not provide loans and do not make investments, but only serve customers. The NBM is in the process of buying a centralized loan management system by which the loans will be dealt with automatically so that the risks in the credit portfolios of banks are discovered faster.
