A new chairman is being sought for the ASF

The ink hadn't even dried, so to speak, on the resignation of Dan Radu Ruşanu submitted to the Permanent Office of the Senate, that rumors about the future chairman of the ASF started making the rounds. There are some voices that claim that the Parliament could promote current vice-president Mircea Ursache to fill the position that Dan Radu Ruşanu vacated. Cosmin Nicula, the president of the budget commission of the Senate, last night told BURSA that there have been no talks about potential candidates for the position of president of the ASF and that for now, the investigation of the Authority still has lots of stages to go through.

• Senators want to make amendments again to the ordinance through which the ASF was created

The ordinance concerning the creation and the functioning of the Financial Oversight Authority (ASF) will be amended again, to restore the credibility of the institution, the senators from the Budget and Finance Commission.

The head of the Commission, PSD senator Cosmin Nicula, yesterday told us, in the beginning of the investigation of the activity of the ASF: "By the end of the audits which we will perform, one of our requests was to lower the salaries. The proposal from the interim chairman of the ASF, Daniel Dăianu, was for the wages to be reduced 30%. But it isn't enough to simply cut those wages. During this audit period, we will go to the amendments of Ordinance 93, the one which created the ASF. We will have to draw up a joint report with the members of the Economic Commission of the Senate and by the time of the hearings and the audits of the ASF, we will draw up an audit report, and by amending Ordinance 94, we want to succeed in making the ASF credible again".

He said that Dan Radu Ruşanu did not produce evidence of the fact that he has returned the money earned from the bonuses he received at the end of last year, and he added that he would notify the leaders of the Senate about the resignation of Ruşanu from the position of chairman of the ASF. In that given situation, says Cosmin Nicula, the members of the parliament need to review the ASF as thoroughly as possible and, of course, come up with proposals for occupying the position of president and of a non-executive position within the ASF, if the 9-member management structure of the Authority will remain in place.

Cosmin Nicula claims that the first vice-president of the ASF Daniel Dăianu returned the bonus he received at the end of last year: "The other people on the board have requested for one third of their salary to be withheld until they will have paid off the full bonus. Many of them have spent those amounts and are unable to return that money in one payment, because it is quite a significant amount".

• Dăianu: "We have a troubled insurance market"

The first vice-president of the ASF, Daniel Dăianu, who is also an interim chairman, considers that the insurance market has many issues and said that his salary is the equivalent of 12,800 Euros. He has proposed that the wages of the ASF be reduced by 30%: "I want to apologize to the citizens for the salary, because the earnings that I have received though a collective decision which was based on the regulation by which the ASF was created. Sure, at the moment, perhaps given the way things are, the document should have been drafted differently and take into account the situation of most people. On the other hand, these earnings in the financial industry are disproportionate compared to what most people, such as for instance an eminent professor or an exceptional doctor earn, especially in Romania".

Going back to the insurance market, Mr. Dăianu said that the ASF must make it so that those who are in charge of the insurance sector, avoid making it look through their statements or actions like the institution makes politically motivated decisions. The ASF official also said that the ASF has major flaws when it comes to it IT systems and that it needs to make investments in that area.

Aside from Daniel Dăianu, vice-presidents Ion Giurescu, Mircea Ursache and Corneliu Moldoveanu also appeared before the Senate commission.