CORRUPTION WITHOUT BORDERS BCR, defrauded with 11 million Euros by its own employees

Several employees of BCR Alba Iulia were indicted yesterday by the prosecutors of the National Anti-Corruption Department, after participating in the defrauding of the bank with over 11 million Euros.

BCR says that it has notified the investigative bodies since back in 2010, following the internal audits which led to the uncovering of the facts of the employees.

According to the National Anti-Corruption Department, 10 employees of BCR Alba Iulia violated their job descriptions which concerned the approval of loans and/or the drawing of the amounts which concern the companies managed or represented by the other defendants.

Thus, the 10 employees of BCR from the Alba Iulia Corporate Business Center are suspected by the DNA of having granted 56 loans, between 2004 and 2010, to 34 companies which did not meet the lending requirements.

The employees in question have exceeded their authority, both in terms of the amount of the loans they granted, as well as in terms of the nature of the operations they performed, by helping the borrowers to take out loans using only photocopies of documents, which were not certified to be original, photocopies which were later proved to be forged.

Furthermore, in exchange for payoffs, the employees of the bank sent misleading information to the central headquarters of BCR in order to conceal the loans that were granted, which they also restructured without complying with the regulations of the bank. The indicted employees were accepting incomplete documentation and did not report to the main office of BCR SA the borrowers in question as sole debtor that the bank was exposed to. The employees of the bank would also grant the borrowers high enough scores to allow them to meet the loan eligibility requirements, and would not check whether the solicitants would meet the requirements of the loan bank norms as well as the destination of the amounts granted as loans. The employees would also not check the whether the requirements for the reactivation and the restructuring of the loans were met and would not monitor the loans from the time they were granted and until their full repayment, in exchange for payoffs, while causing losses to the bank.

The employees as well as the head of the branch, have thus made available to various companies loans amounting to more than 11 million Euros, which were not repaid.

Banca Comercială Română has brought a civil action claiming damages as part of the criminal case against its former employees. The bank alleges the losses in lei amount to the equivalent of 11,336,000 Euros. This amount also includes the unrealized gains, and the losses will be updated as the proceedings progress.

The defendants, charged with complicity to abuse in office, forgery in deeds by private in ongoing form, money laundering, etc. will be tried by the court of Alba.

Last year, BCR was hit by numerous scandals. One of the most resounding happened in October 2013, when customers of BCR Argeş filed a complaint about 2 million Euros which were stolen from their safe deposit boxes at the bank. Also in October 2013, an employee of BCR Braşov was charged with having granted loans without complying with the regulations of the bank, by then taking money from the accounts of the some of the bank's customers.