BACK DOOR INTERVENTION IN THE "FRIENDLY POLEMIC" "What the heck?!"

A sneaking intervention through the back-door , in the "Friendly polemic" in the BURSA newspaper, dedicated to the strategy for the turnaround of the Romanian stock market, happened yesterday, through the pens of the journalists of another financial publication, which started off its new issue with a comprehensive article, called "The stock market is riding high again", a title which the article explains by the fact that over 5000 new accounts were opened on the BSE in the second quarter.

The published article mentions about 90 thousand investors in 2007 and 83 thousand accounts currently opened with the BSE.

If the "philosophy" of this material weren't familiar to me, I would have used the expression "through the pen of the journalists of another financial publication", present in my first sentence.

But, I know whose "philosophy" it is.

It is that of Eugen Voicu, the president of Certinvest, whose fine, dictated by the ASF, due to gaps in his records and due to the failure to update the Registry of Conflicts of interest, has become final one week ago.

Eugen Voicu is the one who, in a seminar organized by the BSE, at the Hilton, about four years ago, expressed the opinion that we should stop speaking about the "active accounts" on the BSE, because it "makes us look bad" (there were about 3-4000 and the number hasn't changed since then) and instead speak of the total number of accounts, which, he was saying at the time, amounted to 100 thousand.

"Why say three thousand accounts, when we can say one hundred thousand, without lying?!", he asked rhetorically.

Later the talks began in the market community concerning "nominee accounts", to have the mechanism for trading through nominee accounts without prevalidation, starting in February 1st, 2012, be extended to the stocks of all the companies listed on the BSE, following the decision of the Romanian National Securities Commission (CNVM).

From that date on, the BSE no longer posted the number of active accounts, meaning those that buy and sell (and which are the only ones that are relevant for the real activity of the stock exchange), but the total number of open accounts, which have not been closed, even though they are no longer active.

As a result, Eugen Voicu has been happy, for more than a year and a half, and the Bucharest Stock Exchange has taken a step back when it comes to transparency.

A coincidence makes it that on January 9th, 2012, Lucian Anghel was elected as the CEO of the BSE, an outcome which is said to have been directed from behind the scenes by Florin Pogonaru and ....Eugen Voicu (besides, we don't see any other qualities which could have caused the brokers to favor Lucian Anghel over other candidates).

In the context of the "Friendly polemic" in BURSA, where I repeatedly said that given the current strategy of the market, I can't see any hope of exiting the depression, the manipulative idea of Eugen Voicu comes back to contradict me, "through the pen of the journalists of a financial daily" (I think this is where the exclamation in the title).

If I am wrong in my deductions, if this is in fact the sincere conviction of our colleagues, then I must apologize to them.

But I feel the need to warn them that Eugen Voicu was sanctioned by the CNVM, in 1996, with a five-year ban from the stock market, for what he had done at Certinvest.

On the other hand, to Lucian Anghel, Florin Pogonaru and Eugen Voicu I am addressing the invitation to participate in the "Friendly polemic" in BURSA, by going through the front door, not through the back door!