National Bank of Moldova receives third report on Kroll company's investigation

Chisinau, 25 November /MOLDPRES/ – National Bank of Moldova (BNM) has received report three on the progress of Kroll Company’s investigation on major fraud in the Republic of Moldova’s banking sector. As a result of the fraud Banca de Economii (Bank of Savings), Banca Sociala (Social Bank) and Unibank became insolvent at the end of 2014. The investigation of Kroll Company depicted committing embezzlement offenses being worth about $600 million, with reference to BNM’s press release.

Tracking the amount of $600 million "to its final destination is ongoing." The Kroll Company’s investigation is part of the developing actions concerning transactions carried out in 2012 – 2014 by three banks of Moldova. The ultimate scope of the activity is the worldwide funds’ recovery from criminals and identify of all parties who participated, benefited from this deliberate fraud, including individuals, companies and financial institutions.

"Kroll Company has continued detection proceeds of fraudulent loans to companies of Shor Group which, in January 2012 – November 2014, acted jointly to insolvency of those three banks. The investigation process revealed additional levels of complexity in the scheme of fraudulent income in laundering purposes. It involves hundreds of bank accounts in many jurisdictions (including Latvia and Estonia) and thousands of transactions designed to prevent detection finally diverted funds," states the central bank.

Millions of dollars in fraudulent revenue were transferred to parties around the world, most being transferred to bank accounts in Russia ($200 million), Moldova ($95 million), Estonia ($58 million) and Cyprus ($41 million). It is not excluded that those transfers, at least partially, might expose money laundering mechanisms that require further analysis, considers the National Bank.

Kroll Company continues to work with international supervisory authorities to find out the money laundering scheme and identify the final destinations of the defrauded funds. Some further investigations and detailed analysis are underway to determine the nature and extent of the potential involvement of other banks in Moldova.

Also, "the investigation has shown that some of the stolen funds arrived on accounts that appear to relate to individuals in Moldova. The analysis continues to clarify the final destination of fraudulent income and to draw up the list of beneficiaries. They must remain confidential to avoid negative impacts of recovery strategies."

BNM also states that the investigation’s next phase will include initiating of the legal action to obtain information from multiple jurisdictions to support detection of funds so that, in the first half of 2017, to undertake recovery actions against identified individuals and organizations that have benefited the fraud or facilitated it.

Over the next months, the company Kroll will continue to provide BNM regularly with some updated information. It is important to keep confidential the next investigative step, in order to maximize the chances of funds recovery.

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor M. Jantovan)