Moldovan Prosecutor General's office, Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office provide details on bank fraud's investigation

Chisinau, 4 July /MOLDPRES/ - Representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PG) and Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (PA) provided details on the investigation of the bank fraud today.

The conference was held after the Kroll-2 report had appeared in public space. Prosecutor General Eduard Harunjen has said that the contract signed with the Kroll Company saw that the report worked out by this company can be given only to the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office and National Bank of Moldova (BNM) and its publication is not allowed. “One week ago, the Supreme Security Council (CSS) demanded the Kroll report. Afterwards, the parliamentary commission asked for the document as well. Then we asked BNM to negotiate with the Kroll Company and ask for the agreement, as the clause reads that this report can be given only to PA and BNM; any other entity has no access to this report. The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office released no Kroll report. It is here on the table; this is the only copy we have received and we will never make it public as long as the Kroll Company does not allow this. Otherwise, somebody take a quite high risk to pay hundreds and tens of thousands of euros, maybe millions, for the damage caused through the non-observance of a contractual cause. We do not know whether Kroll gave permission for this; yet, we learned that a short variant of the report, with many figures omitted, has been published,” Harunjen said.         

The prosecutor general denied the information alleging that an additional list to the report would exist and that it would be at PG. “The Kroll report has never been at the Prosecutor’s General’s Office and neither could it be, because PG did not negotiate with BNM and Kroll. PA is an independent prosecutor’s office which investigates the case and it was the only one to have the acceptance of Kroll to take the possession of the report and use it as information, as beginning of evidence, so that, subsequently, through criminal prosecution ways, this information becomes procedural evidence and stays at the basis of the people’s convictions,” Harunjen added.       

Anticorruption prosecutor Adriana Betisor said that, at present, prosecutors were documenting 26 criminal files on the bank fraud and more than 200 volumes of documents had been already set to courts. At the same time, according to Betisor, 2.276 billion lei has been recovered from the bank fraud so far.   

„That currency which left the bank has not been found; yet, assets of people recognized as guilty on the file, under court sentence, were identified; the equivalent value was identified, which is incriminated, on which distraint was levied and which, also under court ruling, was collected to offset the debts of the three banks. In terms of statistics data, we have 2.276 billion lei recovered money. A part of it represents assets of commercial banks and a part is money which entered to the banks’ account as a result of enforceable titles, or of conviction sentences,” Betisor added.   

The Kroll-2 report was made public today.