Namely because of the former administration of the National Bank of Moldova (NBM), the commission of the banking fraud was possible. Most of the members of the former administration were charged and the prosecutors are to soon decide the further investigative steps in relation to them, Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo stated in a news conference. He noted Vladimir Plahotniuc was the beneficiary of all the transactions and he was to be protected and spared from any criminal liability, IPN reports.
Alexandr Stoianoglo said that on November 13, 2014, the Government of the Republic of Moldova decided that all the interbank loans that at that time represented 222 million lei should be paid back to the financial institutions. On November 17, 2014, the Ministry of Finance provided a state guarantee for repaying the money. After the adoption of the decisions, one of the banks among whose shareholders is the company affiliated to Vladimir Plahotniuc during only five days transferred about 2.3 billion lei to the accounts of the bankrupt bank Banca de Economii (BEM).
“In reality, only 1.2 billion lei was transferred to the accounts of Banca de Economii, the outstanding debt being generated by the method of “carousel” of fictitious interbank placements. This consisted in the transferring of sums to the accounts of other companies that, for their part, placed them again at the BEM. All these actions were committed with the flagrant violation of the legislation, in the absence of financial reasons and not without the involvement of the National Bank. All the sums from the accounts of the BEM were transferred immediately to the accounts of companies from offshore areas and where then stolen,” stated the prosecutor general.
According to him, on November 28, 2014 already, the National Bank directed about 2.3 billion lei to the commercial bank’s accounts, which was earlier transferred to the BEM’s accounts. “It should be noted that the new shareholders of the bank perfectly knew this, but nevertheless purchased the shareholding whose beneficiary was citizen Plahotniuc. This wasn’t news for the law enforcement agencies, including the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, but these did nothing. What is the possible explanation? It’s simple: Vladimir Plahotniuc was the beneficiary of all the transactions and he was to be protected and spared from any liability, primarily criminal one,” stated Alexandr Stoianoglo.
He noted that doses of lies were regularly injected into the public sphere so as to show that the investigation of the fraud went on, but the actions were actually mimicked or the investigations were directed to a wrong path.
