FNI investors will not be allowed to touch the accounts of the CNVM, for now

• Bogdan Chetreanu, commissioner of the Romanian National Securities Commission: "I would advise the FNI investors to stop spending money on court enforcement officers"

After living under the threat of foreclosure since the beginning of the year, the CNVM can now relax: the FNI investors who received a favorable ruling will not be allowed to garnish the accounts of the Commission.

The lawyers of the Commission have obtained the suspension of the foreclosure of the institution, after requesting a grace period for the payment of the compensations, based on the Emergency Ordinance no. 4/2011, , Romanian National Securities Commission commissioner Bogdan Chetreanu said for "BURSA".

The emergency ordinance stipulates that the court can suspend the beginning or the continuation of compulsory execution proceedings until the resolution of the request for the awarding of the payment deadline.

"The compulsory execution of the accounts is currently suspended", said Mr. Chetreanu, who added: "I have submitted a request with the Court of Bucharest for the awarding of a grace period. Ordinance 4/2011 also allows public institutions that are being foreclosed upon to request a rescheduling of debts, but we haven"t done this because the Romanian National Securities Commission would never be able to pay back the compensation stipulated in the court ruling. Furthermore, we don"t even know exactly whether we are talking about hundreds of millions of Euros or about billions. There is still the issue of summoning all of the injured parties to appear in court, since we are talking about approximately 130,000 FNI investors, but the court will most likely find a procedural solution to solve this aspect as well".

At the end of September last year, the High Court of Cassation and Justice published a decision requiring the CNVM to compensate over 100,000 FNI investors who claimed that they have lost their savings which they invested in the National Investment Fund (FNI).

The management of the Romanian National Securities Commission warned at the time that the ruling would prevent it from performing its current operations, since the compensations it was expected to pay to the FNI investors far exceeded its annual budget of about 8-10 million Euros.

"The issue of compensating FNI investors needs to be solved one way or another because the Romanian National Securities Commission is at risk of being dismantled. This is a very serious matter because any major disruption at our level affects the entire European financial system. All that is left is to make a political decision which would solve the situation that the NCMV is facing".

Commissioner Bogdan Chetreanu claims that, even though the accounts of the Romanian National Securities Commission were garnished in the first months of the year, not one leu has gone to the victims of the FNI.

"I would advise the investors of the FNI to stop spending money on court enforcement officers to have them foreclose on our accounts. Not one leu has left from the CNVM to go towards all these investors nor will any money be paid to them until the clarification of this matter", the CNVM commissioner added.