Dragnea's bearer shares aren't criminal

The commotion caused by the old news that BURSA published, which were revealed as if they were new, by the Rise Project "investigators", drew attention to the detail, (that we presented eight years ago), that Liviu Dragnea, as president of the Teleorman County Council, was able to award the contracts to his own company Tel Drum S.A. the road development contracts, by hiding his position of shareholder, due to the anonymity characteristic of bearer shares issued by the company at the time of privatization.

That's how some people came to the conclusion that bearer shares are "criminal" and they provide the opportunity for criminal actions, and in the public space have been formulated "political" opinions, incriminating the majority of the parliament, which allegedly tolerates such "instruments of financial crime", which should be prohibited by law.

These are of course naiveties.

It's not that bearer shares are tolerated by the current parliamentary majority, but are stipulated in the law no. 31 of 1990 as one of the legal forms for issuing the shares of a company, according to the decision of the General Shareholder Meeting.

Meaning, all the parliamentary majorities and minorities in these 27 years since we have companies.

The current parliamentary majority has of course its sins (the first and worst is that it tolerates Dragnea as the chair of the Chamber of Deputies), but does not have the ability to substitute itself to the General Shareholder Meeting of any company.

It's not bearer shares that gave Dragnea the opportunity to get rich based on the contracts awarded to his own company, but the tolerance of the authorities tasked with the protection of public money.

As evidence, eight years ago, when BURSA published the article which revealed the malversations of Liviu Dragnea, nobody bothered him with any investigation.

Bearer shares grant their holders the benefit of being traded directly, through simple physical remittance, meaning that the transaction is the absolute responsibility of the owner, unlike listed nominal shares, the trading of which requires the intermediation of brokers, (with the all possible plethora of problems that intermediation involves, from fraud to theft).

In the Second World War, in occupied France, Hitler removed bearer shares by law, replacing them with nominal shares, so he could track the moves of Jewish fortunes.

After the liberation, bearer shares returned in France.

I wouldn't be surprised if this incident with Rise Project and Dragnea persuaded us of the opportunity of adopting this Hitler-style measure.