Emil Botea, chairman of Banca Populara Romana (Romanian People's Bank - BPR) says BPR's situation is as good as solved, after a sale-purchase contract for BPR was allegedly signed with a consortium of 17 international capital companies last Friday.
Of all the 17 companies, Botea named only one, that is the Moscow-based Investment and Technology Bank. He said the consortium would allegedly hold the controlling interests in Banca Unirea (i.e. where BPR holds 75%).
Unirea has been facing a liquidity shortage for nearly a year now, with the General Shareholders Assembly scheduled to make a decision about a capital increase from 150bn lei to 163bn lei today. Emil Botea's announcement is not the only one of the kind made lately.
Last year, depositors have repeatedly been reassured that the bank had a recovery programme or that it would get a capital inflow.
"The money will come from several sources, Russia, Switzerland, Malaysia, Singapore, while the Investment and Technology Bank from Moscow will handle the technical details (i.e. - ?).
As for the price, we agreed that they should assume all the debts we had to BPR depositors, that is some 400bn lei. Therefore, it will now be possible for the depositors to get their money back," Botea claims.
Ziarul Financiar reached several officials of the commercial representative office of the Russian Federation in Romania, who said that they were not hundred percent positive the bank really existed.
"We did some research in Moscow, as well and we found there is no bank by this name (i.e. the Investment and Technology Bank in Moscow).
There is only one financial institution closely resembling the name, the Moscow-based Industrial Investment Bank. This might be it, as far as they are concerned," Alexei Perikalin, expert with Russian Federation's Commercial Representative Office in Romania told Ziarul Financiar.
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