The prosecutors with the National Anticorruption Department (DNA) have started a probe into the transactions conducted with the financial investment companies' (SIF) shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange last year. Both the National Securities Commission (CNVM) and the Bucharest Stock Exchange, which could have supplied information about the transactions, say that they not only did not report anything about this to the prosecutors but also know nothing about any probe.
"A criminal investigation is being conducted by the DNA into a series of transactions conducted with the SIF shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange last year," the DNA officials said in reply to ZF's request for comment.
They added that under the law they were not at liberty to reveal the identity of those subject to investigation, the potential crimes they might be charged with or the name of the person who told the institution about this. The case was in the preliminary documents stage (verifications) at the moment, the DNA representatives said.
Sources familiar with the investigation say it is mainly about the transactions on March 28 last year.
That day Parliament decided to modify the emergency ordinance on the SIF stake cap, by applying a 1% cap for the groups of persons acting in concert, which was bad news to the investors on the Stock Exchange, because the new regulation could be safely assumed that it would make some of the investors lower their stakes in SIFs by selling shares on the market and thus driving the prices down.
The result of the Parliament voting was announced around 12.45 and then investors started to sell. The Stock Exchange decided to suspend the SIFs from trading at 13.05, yet in the 20 minutes between the announcement of the decision in Parliament and the suspension from trading, the SIFs plummeted, losing up to 8% of their value, as a result
