Stolen Billion Recoveries Are Slow

The Ministry of Finance data show little progress in the first half of this year record in returning assets withdrawn from three bankrupt banks. Given that almost 10 million lei per month are charged, the stolen billion dollars will not be returned even after 100 years, mold-street.com reports. The forecasts are gloomy even despite the fact that there are dozens of cases in the courts about the recovery of billions of lei, including against the former management of banks, accused of causing colossal damage. Moreover, the seizure of assets worth billions of lei, which belonged to Vladimir Plahotniuc, Ilan Shor and some companies and their affiliates, does not mean that the money will soon go to the Ministry of Finance and the NBM. The Ministry of Finance data show that most of the money was raised as a result of lawsuits and bankruptcy proceedings against debtors. Only a few million lei are collected from the sale of own assets or acquired assets. During this period, half of the income came from Banca de Economii and Banca Sociala, while Unibank returned only about half a million lei. Thus, the three banks have accumulated more than 2.66 billion lei by July 1, 2021, as part of this process. At the same time, the institutions managed to pay a total of only 2613.98 million lei out of term loans amounting to about 14 billion lei, provided in November 2014 and March 2015 by the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) to three banks belonging to ShorHolding. The data of the Ministry of Finance show that in the first six months of this year, the compensation amounted to 47.7 million lei.