The ASF wants to get back the money which the Proprietatea Fund paid to the victims of the FNI

The Financial Oversight Authority (ASF) has taken the Proprietatea Fund to court to recoup the amount of 958,686 lei (principal and interest), representing certain regulation commissions which would have normally been payable to the ASF, but which the Fund was required to pay to several FNI investors, according to a ruling to validate the garnishment rendered by the Court of Bucharest, according to a press release of the Proprietatea Fund.

In March 2013, "BURSA" wrote that the victims of the FNI had won in court the right to be compensated for their loss by the National Securities Commission (which was subsequently incorporated in the Financial Oversight Authority, along with the and CSSPP) have tried to recoup their money from the fees owed to the CNVM by the Bucharest Stock Exchange and by the brokerage firms, and later turned against the Proprietatea Fund.

At the time, the representatives of the Proprietatea Fund have confirmed that the Fund has received 282 notices from FNI investors which are in the process of enforcing certain rulings of the court against the CNVM, asking the Fund to redirect the payment of the commissions owed to the CNVM to the enforcement officer, for a total amount of 8,711,422.91 lei.

At the time, the CNVM told brokers not to comply with the writs of execution through the garnishment of the amounts owed to the CNVM, because those amounts were meant to finance the organizing and the operation of the CNVM and they were part of the category of amounts which were not allowed to be used for the payment of claims set through writs of execution against the CNVM.

At the time, the Commission used as a justification a law which protects it against the victims of the FNI. According to the law, "the execution of the payment obligations of the CNVM derived from claims against it set through writs of execution, will only be done out of the amounts that exceed five million lei, representing the monthly average of the revenues collected by the budget of the CNVM".

After the creation of the Financial Oversight Authority, the matter of the compensation of the FNI investors was shifted to the AAAS (former AVAS).

The stock market regulator - the CNVM - had been ordered by the court, through a court ruling of 2007, to compensate the former FNI investors, with rumors in the market placing the liability at a few hundred million Euros.

Last summer, Mihail Nicolaevici, the president of the National Association for the Protection of Investors (ANPI), told us that the FNI investors who were supposed to be compensated by the former National Securities Commission did not receive any payment, even though in 2013, the Authority for the Administration of the Assets of the State (AAAS) was announcing that investors had the possibility to file requests for compensation.

Even though the AAAS took over the problem, investors have turned against the ASF. The president of the ANPI explained: "We have a ruling which states that the party which is liable under civil law is the CNVM, currently the ASF".

In February 2015, Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu was convicted to six years and four months in prison, in the case of embezzlement from the National Investment Fund (FNI), but that hasn't made the victims of the fraud any happier. In that case, Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu had been charged with money laundering and abetting embezzlement.