BUCHAREST, Romania — Prosecutors on Friday detained 33 government officials and bankers on suspicion of money laundering and fraud that cost Romania €22 million ($28.5 million).
The detainees included three Economy
Ministry officials, the deputy chairman of the French-owned Romanian
Development Bank, and the chairman of a state fund that offers banks
guarantees in exchange for business loans.
The officials have been
suspended, pending an inquiry, and prosecutors have asked the Bucharest
Court to rule later Friday that 32 of the detainees be held under
arrest for one month.
On Thursday, prosecutors raided about 50
homes and offices in Bucharest, Giurgiu and Calarasi in the case and
questioned about 100 people.
Anti-organized crime prosecutors say
that from 2010 to 2012, two people organized a scam that involved bank
employees. They allegedly managed to fraudulently obtain 40 bank loans
for fictitious businesses from 16 branches of the Romanian Development
Bank and Romania’s state-owned CEC savings bank that were underwritten
by the state fund for small- and medium-sized businesses.
Hungarian
bank OTP; the Turkish banks Eximbank and Garanti Bank; Austria’s
Raiffeisen Bank; Greece’s Piraeus Bank, and Millennium Bank from
Portugal also were targeted by the scam, but it was not clear whether
they gave out loans.
Corruption is widespread in Romania, one of
the poorest countries in the European Union. In recent days, authorities
began to prosecute state railway employees who routinely pocketed money
from fare dodgers without issuing tickets.
