The strategy for recovering the money stolen from Moldova’s banking system is more than a communication instrument and an instrument that would help in the investigation of the banking fraud because immediately after the document was made public, it was widely used as an advocacy tool at the European institutions by the Moldovan authorities and because when you intend to catch a thieve, you don’t tell the thieve about this beforehand. Thus, such strategies are not made public, says an analysis by the Center of Legal Resources that was presented in a roundtable meeting in Chisinau, IPN reports.
The Center’s head Vladislav Gribincea said that even if a strategy for recovering the funds stolen from the banking system exists, it is not clear who approved the document and what is the level of commitment for implementing this successfully. After four years, the authorities cannot yet say how much money disappeared from the banking system and it is not clear how, taking efficient investigation measures, those in charge cannot say how much money was stolen from the banks.
The analysis says at least 20% of the sums stolen from the banking system are not investigated in general. Even if prosecutors say the sum is not smaller than 13.3 billion lei, these aim to recover only 10.7 billion as 2.6 billion was already recovered by selling property of the liquidated banks. The prosecutors said 5.2 billion lei was traced, but judges of ordinary law courts ascertained there is no evidence showing that the former president of the Administration Board of Banca de Economii Ilan Shor stole 2.5 billion lei from the bank, which is about half of the reportedly traced sum. Also, the authorities reported that 2.7 billion lei was collected from the current mayor of Orhei, but there is no court decision to levy such a sum. After almost four years of the banking fraud, prosecutors’ investigations concerning approximately 38% of the embezzled funds (5.1bn lei) go on.
Vladislav Gribincea said the strategy does not say that no leu of the stolen funds was returned to the state. The state actually compensated 2.6 billion lei from the sale of the assets of the three banks, but this is not stolen money, but money that existed in the banks. So, no amount of the 13.3 billion lei was recovered.
The analysis authors noted that such strategies are usually not made public so as to make sure the investigation is efficient. Bit this document was presented in a news conference this June, before the visit paid by Moldovan officials to Brussels. The country’s administration used the document as an advocacy instrument. These aspects generate suspicions about the independency of the institutions that made the strategy public and about their involvement in political games.
