The NBR still isn't complying with the law

The law has achieved a new victory against the National Bank of Romania yesterday, as the latter has posted the full wealth statements (including the annual net revenues) of its executives, on the website of the institution.

Since January, when BURSA asked the representatives of the Central Bank of Romania why they were not complying with the law that requires them to make their revenues public, the banking authority has gone through several stages in its behavior:

1. Has claimed that there was a combination of European regulations that exempted the NBR from having to comply with Romanian laws;

2. Has not accepted in any way that the justification in question was nothing else than a speculative interpretation of the law, which had no way of standing up to the Romanian law, whose stipulations are clear, and the NBR was implicitly supported by the ANI (National Integrity Agency, which is the institution that manages this law of institutional transparency), as it gave us a series of cryptic responses to our clear, to the point and legitimate questions;

3. Once the subject was hijacked by politicians, the representatives of the Central Bank tried first and foremost to discredit the politicians involved in the matter;

4. But, being widely publicized by the politicians, the subject became accessible and interesting to other media entities, which is when the NBR went into defense, taking the first step back - governor Mugur Isărescu publicly announced a monthly income of approximately 13,000 Euros, stemming from the sum of his salary and executive compensation;

5. A second step back was taken through the decision of the Board of Directors of the NBR to actually publicize the salaries of the executives of the NBR and the wage grids of the managers;

6. The third step back came upon the insistence of the BURSA journalist, who pressed NBR spokesman Dan Suciu to subsequently admit that in fact, the governor's monthly revenues amounted to approximately 16,000 Euros, including other compensations;

7. Meanwhile, the head of the ANI, who had been trying to dodge our questions, Horia Georgescu, had been arrested in relation to the "Bica case" (talk about insanity, the head of the National Integrity getting arrested?!), which meant that the NBR lost its support in breaking the law, and under its new director, the ANI broke the silence, posting the complete 2015 wealth statement of Mugur Isărescu, which showed an average median income of approximately 21,000 Euros; the press felt the blood in the water, Antena 3 started making TV debates about it, ridiculing NBR spokesman Dan Suciu, who was put in an awkward position, as well as Adrian Vasilescu, who had a very hard time in defending the NBR;

8. The fourth step back was taken yesterday, when as a result of the coup de grace dealt by the ANI, the NBR posted the complete wealth statements of all the board members of the NBR, over the last few years, as it was pointless to hide them, or else they ran the risk of them being published by the Agency.

I have to note, however, that this fourth step back is not the last, to be able to say that the NBR has truly complied with the law: the members of the Board of Directors of the NBR are not the only ones required to be transparent when it comes to their income, the full publication of the complete wealth statements of the NBR managers is also required (they have already been made public, but in an incomplete form).

But the NBR didn't do that yesterday.

And, according to his own public statement, Mugur Isărescu has no intention whatsoever of doing that.

In other words, the NBR governor is still bargaining when it comes to complying with the law.

This is not an impression, this is demonstrated by the fact that not one of the press releases of the NBR, whether it's the one which informs us that the salaries have been disclosed, or the one announcing that the complete wealth statements have been made public, states that those disclosures are made in order to comply with the law.

No, the law is ignored.

It's as if those disclosures were made based on the decisions of the Board of Directors of the NBR, at its discretion, and not because it was required to comply with the law.

In all the other cases, the press releases of the NBR is replete with mentions of laws and their provisions, as the justification for its decision.

But in this particular case, of the transparency of wealth statements, the NBR doesn't say a word about compliance with the law.

Governor Mugur Isărescu, if you don't like the ANI law, then get mobilized and initiate its amendment. Avoiding the law through various subterfuges is not a solution, except perhaps for LLCs, not for an institution like a central bank.

The National Bank of Romania should be a national standard for legal compliance, morality, confidence, - how can you lose your prestige consolidated over a quarter of a century of hard work, dedication and intelligence, in just one year of mistaken positioning and blunders?!

Comply with the law!

If you want, you can just privatize the National Bank of Romania.

That won't exempt you from publishing your wealth statements, according to the law.