British company to carry out special investigation at three Moldovan banks

Chisinau, 31 January /MOLDPRES/ - A company from the United Kingdom will carry out a special investigation at Banca de Economii (Savings Bank), Banca Sociala (Social Bank) and Unibank, the National Bank of Moldova (BNM) has reported.  

Participated in the tender three of the biggest international audit firms, members of the group called Big Four: Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, as well as the company Kroll Associates UK Limited (Kroll), registered in the United Kingdom, according to a BNM press release.  

Experts from Kroll Associates will carry out a preliminary investigation of the transactions at the above-mentioned banks, which amount to hundreds of millions of lei. The goal of the investigations will be "to identify potential ways of inquiring suspect and eventually fraudulent transactions, as well as to establish possible ways of recovering the assets of these banks."

At the first stage of the investigation, due to last one month, the company will analyse the suspect transactions from these banks, involved people, will establish the financial flows and where the latter were transferred and will come up with proposals to work out a long-term strategy, BNM Governor Dorin Dragutanu has said at a programme "Spatiul Public" (Public Area) at the Radio Moldova.    

"This company will not replace BNM's obligations as regulator in the banking system, neither the ones of the inquiry bodies, which are to set the degree of infringement in the actions of some leaders of these banks. Yet, the company has abilities of expertise in investigating international transactions,"  the BNM governor specified.

According to a press release by the National Bank of Moldova, issued in late last December, "a number of transactions of particularly large sums of money," worth several billions of lei, took place between Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank in November 2014.