"Libra Bank" - the new shareholders have paid, but the old ones weren't paid

The Turkish citizen Cenk Ermiya, shareholder in "Libra Bank", stated that 84% of the shares available for sale were not paid by the buyers. He made this statement officially, in a legal manner, in front of an attorney in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. He signed this official statement also on behalf of other shareholders he claim to represent. According to him, of the whole stake (94.4676% of "Libra Bank" shares), only 11% were paid and transferred to buyers.

Lucian Cornescu Ring, small shareholder in "Libra Bank" (but not involved in this deal), contests for the buyers their quality of shareholders.

Lucian Cornescu Ring claims, in a text we received yesterday, that the sale contract for the "Libra Bank" shares has expired and the shares must return to their previous owners. He explained how the Turkish shareholders were mistreated by the Central Bank, which threatened them to cancel the shares if not sold. The reason: there are no diplomatic relations between Romania and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

The contract was signed on May 26, 2003. The buyers are "Romportmet" SA, "Romarta" SA, "Electroaparataj" SA, plus "Metex" SA, "Valmetex" SA and IMSAT SA who became shareholders later on. According to Lucian Cornescu Ring, the agreement stipulated a grace period (until January 10, 2004) to finalize the contract, but the deadline was exceeded and the shares were not paid.

Lucian Cornescu Ring brings another argument to cancel the contract: all the buyers belong to the "Broadhurst" investment fund, which can be assimilated to a kind of association impossible to become majority shareholder in a bank (according to the legal framework).

The "Libra Bank" press office contests all these arguments and claims that the buyers paid every single penny of the price, in due time.

This strange mystery has a simple explanation: the buyers paid, indeed, but the sellers didn't receive their money. The payment went to an escrow account and they are still there, because the sellers didn't cashed.

The problem seems to come from losses reported by "Libra Bank" between May 26, 2003 (when the contract was signed) and December 18, 2003 (the contract deadline). The bank lost over ROL 70 billion in this lapse of time, says Mr. Ring, and this alters the initial price. Most probably, the parts interpret in a different way the contractual stipulations concerning the responsibility on the bank for the "transition" time, when the ownership shifted from the former shareholders to the new ones, and for this reason the former shareholders refused to cash the money and claimed to be unpaid.