WHEN ASKED WHAT HE WAS DOING AT MEDIAFAX Sobolewski went to the men's room

• BVB: "Sobolewski's presence at the offices of Mediafax did not have any connection to the prosecutors' searches"

The folklore around this story sounds as follows: "After «BURSA»(and it alone) reported the worrisome presence of Ludwik Sobolewski at the headquarters of Mediafax, on the very day that the agency was being searched by prosecutors and policemen, under the suspicion of sub tax evasion, the members of the Board of the Exchange (who regularly read < BURSA >) have asked Sobolewski: < What were you doing there? >

According to the story, at that moment, Lucian Anghel, the president of the BSE, smiled, but nobody knows whether he smiled because he found the question amusing, or because he was smiling at something he was remembering.

At that very moment, Sobolewski apparently excused himself to go to the bathroom, he got up, he went out the door, closed it behind him and never returned".

But please treat this introduction as "folklore", because the members of the Board of the Exchange have agreed not to talk about what happens over there, and since then, we no longer have any statements available, only folklore.

The presence of Ludwik Sobolewski, the general manager of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, at the headquarters of Mediafax, on December 11, 2014, during the searches conducted by prosecutors and policemen in a tax evasion case, had no connection to the investigation in question, the BSE told us yesterday, following an enquiry from "BURSA".

The representatives of the BSE told us: "The presence of the managing director of the Bucharest Stock Exchange at the headquarters of Mediafax, on December 11th, had no connection, in any possible sense of the word, to the searches, and the BSE objects to the imputations included in your questions of January and December".

At the time of the searches of Mediafax, neither the executive of the BSE nor its representatives answered the simple and respectful question on the reasons of Sobolewski's presence at the headquarters of the press agency.

The question "Why was Sobolewski present at the headquarters of Mediafax during the searches?" does not contain any imputation nor is the answer to that question so difficult, that it would require any preparation and time.

In a similar situation with Sobolewski, Cătălin Creţu, Area Manager at Visa for Romania and Bulgaria, told the press that he was at the headquarters of Mediafax, on that fateful day of December 11, to grant an interview on the issue of taxes.

Brief and to the point.

Nobody else bothered him with any further questions.

After he did not answer the press, Sobolewski apparently did not answer the Council of the Exchange either, in other words his bosses, according to some sources. He simply dodged the question, when he was asked, on the Board Meeting, about his visit at Mediafax.

After our insistences, the BSE yesterday told us, that Ludwik Sobolewski was at Mediafax, as CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. And from that, we can infer that he definitely he wasn't there as CEO of the Romanian Post Office.

The BSE apparently has ongoing contracts with the press agency, but it did provide any details in its official response, invoking the regulations of the BSE, which allow the company not to report contracts of lower amounts.

"The BSE reports on its contracts according to every regulation that is relevant to listed companies", the representatives of the BSE told us.

Our question, however, wasn't looking to find the amount of those contracts, we actually wanted to find out what stringent issues did Sobolewski's visit to Mediafax answer to, precisely as the search was happening, because in the following period, the agency did not publish any interview with Sobolewski and thus, the reason for the visit remains mysterious.

From the press release of Mediafax, we understand that the employees were kept standing for ten hours during that search; one wonders Sobolewski was offered a seat?

The representatives of the BSE also said that Ludwik Sobolewski did not carry out any negotiations to acquire any press entity of the Mediafax group.

The three people who were arrested last month, as part of the action brought by the prosecutors against the Mediafax press group for money laundering will remain under arrest for 30 more days.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal recently approved the request of the General Prosecutors' Office to extend the preventive custody of Roxana Grigoruţă (charged with tax evasion and money laundering), Sorin Dinu and Dragoş Chiş, both suspected of complicity to tax evasion and money laundering.