EXCLUSIVE Vacancy contest for top management positions of Broker Cluj

Ştefania Ciocîrlan

Former and current chairman duke it out in court Badly hurt by the sanctions of the Romanian Securities Commission, following the fraud in Broker"s Deva office and the irregularities found in its Baia Mare branch, brokerage firm "Broker" Cluj now finds itself in the position of having to look for its next management team on the financial market.

Thus, the Board of the Company has announced the vacancy of the General Manager and Deputy General Manager, after the market regulator cast out the company"s previous management, consisting of Petru Prunea and Adrian Ceucă. The company is currently led by an interim management team.

"So far we have received four applications for these two positions, coming from several notorious brokers", Mr. Anton Ionescu, the chairman of "Broker Cluj", stated for our newspaper. According to him, the board of "Broker" will make its final decision next week, after reviewing the resumes of the applicants.

"We will consider their experience, their accomplishments and their education", Mr. Ionescu said.

The war between the old and the new management teams went to court Petru Prunea, the former chairman and general manager of "Broker", has filed a lawsuit against the chairman of the board, Anton Ionescu, and the judge who appointed Mr. Ionescu as General Manager of the brokerage firm.

Mr. Prunea claims that the current chairman of "Broker" was not legally validated and therefore all his decisions as interim chairman are null and void.

"The change of the company"s management should have been validated by a judge appointed by the Office of the Trade Register, but the first judge that Mr. Ionescu went to refused to appoint him", said Mr. Prunea, who added: "Instead of filing an appeal, Anton Ionescu went to another judge who appointed him as interim general manager". The second judge infringed on the decision of the first judge, and thus committed an infraction, according to Mr. Prunea. He said that the decision of the second judge was the only one published on the site of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. In turn, Anton Ionescu says that the action of Mr. Prunea have no legal grounds and they are only intended to prevent the company from operating normally.

"I was legally and duly elected by the Board of Administration of Broker and there"s no doubt about it: I am now the chairman of the board", Mr. Ionescu said, who added: "I really don"t know what Mr. Prunea wants. He was severely sanctioned and barred from operating on the stock market. It seems perpetually suing the company has become his favorite past time".

According to Mr. Ionescu, another reason why Petru Prunea is fighting "Broker" Cluj is a 200,000 RON amount that the former chairman borrowed from the company to use as margin.

"Mr. Prunea had a 200,000 lei debt towards the company. He sold shares worth approximately 200,000 lei and we have decided to freeze this money for now, on account of his debt", Anton Ionescu explained. Petru Prunea sued "Broker" trying to overturn this decision.

• Investigation at the company"s Deva Branch continues

The investigation of the fraud at the Deva branch of "Broker" is far from over, even though it has been almost six months since the Police was first notified of that situation. Over 400 investors who were defrauded are still waiting for their compensation.

"Just today (ed. note - yesterday), we had a team of experts and investigators from the Alba county office of the National Anticorruption Department (DNA) come in here and ask us to hand more papers over to them", Mr. Ionescu said.

"We are fully cooperating with the DNA, and once the results of the investigation become known, we will decide on what to do further", he said.