THE PERSPECTIVE OF MARIA VOINEA Lawyer Dan Stoicescu: "The employees of BCR are the only ones to blame for the situation of Harinvest"

Maria Voinea is the broker that everyone is pointing a finger at for everything that went wrong or bad in the "Harinvest" case, but her lawyer, Dan Stoicescu, has a different outlook on the situation.

Mr. Stoicescu says: "The < Harinvest > case it not essentially a case of < fraud >; instead it is the result of a chain of neglectful acts and rushed and irresponsible decisions made by the incompetent employees of BCR, the BSE, the Central Depository, the ASF and Harinvest who handled badly a critical situation whose effects could have easily been avoided".

According to the quoted lawyer, "the situation was started off by employees of BCR who, in November 2013, have decided, in an irresponsible and unjustified manner, to stop executing sell-out transactions with the Harinvest counterparty like they used to do until then, or at least to notify within a usable delay that they would no longer conduct that type of transactions. Even though they were warned about the disastrous consequences that such a decision could have on the market, they have preferred to bring into the market such a factor of systemic risk which got out of control and had the effects that you know".

The sale of all the shares present in the accounts of Harinvest to cover the settlement of the trades with BCR was recommended, covered and ensured by several market institutions, the lawyer of Maria Voinea told us.

He explained: "In other words, some incompetent employees of BCR all of a sudden thought that the situation in which two of the traders (from BCR and Harinvest) notify each other about the fact that they have introduced the orders in the regular market of the BSE and of the Rasdaq, on some illiquid stocks (the stocks which were the object of the sell-out trades), represent an act of manipulation of the market, which they have noted as such and have reported to the ASF.

These are the main people to blame (among many others) for the situation which was created at Harinvest.

This follows a number of other rushed decisions of some just as incompetent employees of the market institutions who have practically pushed Harinvest into the critical situation of selling everything it had in its accounts to cover up the situation which was created".

Dan Stoicescu considers that all those who in fact responsible are now trying to cover up their incompetence and their mistaken decisions by inventing some alleged and imaginary acts of market manipulation which BCR has "uncovered" and which the ASF is now "investigating": "Moreover, using this alleged manipulation as an excuse, BCR has laid off in December 2013 its own trader (ed. note: Dan Deak). He has subsequently taken them to court in order to get the annulment of the decision to lay him off abusively.

The ASF is now conducting an investigation at BCR concerning the < acts of manipulation > found by BCR. If the ASF will interpret two traders speaking on the phone before placing the orders in the market represents market manipulation (especially on illiquid stocks), then just about everyone in the market should be investigated for market manipulation".

Lawyer Dan Stoicescu says that Maria Voinea will notify and collaborate with all of the institutions of the state to uncover the truth and to identify all the people who are responsible for this situation.

The criminal investigators are also conducting their own probe, on the issue of "Harinvest". So far, Maria Voinea has not been indicted.

The shareholders of Harinvest are Valentin Cismaru, with a stake of 23.04%, Veronel Lungu (30.86%), Dumitru Craciunescu (23.04%), Ion Antonescu (23.04%).