Gheorghe Piperea: "The former management of ASF must be brought before the court"

The former management of the ASF should answer to the court for the way it managed the capital market and the insurance market in our country, says lawyer Gheorghe Piperea, AUR coordinator for the campaign for the European Parliament elections.

Mr. Piperea made an extensive x-ray of the capital market in our country at the end of the mandate of the current management team of ASF headed by Nicu Marcu: "It is catastrophic what happened during this period when ASF was led by Mr. Nicu Marcu . I don't need to prove anything; you all know very well what happened. There were two bankruptcies that currently total 2.2 billion euros, in the field of insurance. We are talking about some amounts that do not know when they will ever be paid and, if they are paid, they will anyway cause a very large increase in the cost of insurance, not only RCA type ones. The world must know that the money from the Insurance Guarantee Fund is collected from the other insurers, who, in order to be able to bear this increase in the tax to the FGA, must increase all insurance premiums: from RCA, to CASCO, to insurance business, home, professional insurance for managers, including life insurance. That would have been enough to say everything about the Marcu team. I wonder how these people remained in office and how they were not questioned by the Prosecutor's Office, because in the insurance market we are talking about more than incompetence; it is simply a matter of causing bankruptcy. Normally, the creditors and the liquidator in the two files should hold ASF and the natural persons in the Authority's management responsible for causing the insolvency. But that won't happen because the liquidator who is the same in both files - even if it's about incompatibilities/conflicts of interest - has been put there to keep him quiet.

There are also problems in the area of the capital market, where there were serious things, but their scale did not hold the front page of the newspapers. It's about cheating on certain bonds, there were listings that shouldn't have been - for example in the case of RCS-RDS. That company is owned by that vehicle in the Netherlands, a vehicle that was listed on the BVB without having anything in the patrimony, but having holdings in RCS-RDS and the other adjacent companies. It was a song listing from the beginning, because it started with a money listing, after which they subscribed some pension funds, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and after that the listing became very marketable. There is another serious matter: normally, legally, in reality, you have no way to list on the stock exchange a package of shares of a company that is not the issuer itself, that is, it is not listed on the stock exchange. I am referring to Hidroelectrica, which was not listed on the BVB, but only the 20% package owned by Fondul Proprietatea. But the rules changed during the game, I don't have too many disappointments about this listing because it turned out well in the end. The big problem is that we will find at some point that the former SIFs, as well as the pension funds, will be left without titles, because, for example, at the present time Fondul Proprietatea is decapitalized at 25% of its value, after the distribution of dividends. There are also problems in the market of privately managed pension funds, it is the lost money that they invested in international shares in Russian banks, plus some money invested in RCS-RDS. In short, the previous mandate was extraordinarily serious and I believe that the entire management must be brought before the court in the criminal cases regarding the bankruptcies in the insurance market".

That's why Gheorghe Piperea believes that the former management of ASF led by Nicu Marcu deserves grade 2, with only one exception in the lawyer's opinion: the vice-president with powers over pension funds, Daniel Armeanu, who "did everything he could and even he is professional".

Regarding the future management of the ASF, Mr. Piperea said that he expects its members to correct all the deficiencies of the last years, to be pro-active because they act in areas where, if they are not carefully controlled, there is a high risk of committing illegalities, areas with extremely high liquidity and high risk of money laundering.

Gheorghe Piperea stated: "Don't forget what happened in the case of Euroins, an extremely serious thing! Two days before the license was lifted, the money from the account was transferred to Bulgaria, it is parked there, it is not known what happens to it, and which are either the result of money laundering or can become the object of money laundering" .

The AUR coordinator for the campaign for the European Parliament stated that he is optimistic about the appointment of Alexandru Petrescu as the president of the ASF, because he knows him personally, and he is a competent man, whose appointment he would not object to.

Gheorghe Piperea concluded: "I am confident that Daniel Armeanu will continue to do a good job. For the rest, I don't know the others very well, but I credit them with the trust given to any beginner, provided that they don't tread on the streets where those from the former management trod and especially those from the second-level who head there and about which the Bulgarians from Euroins were drawing attention that they actually caused the bankruptcy of that company".