RIDHA TEKAIA SAYS SICKNESS OF MOLDOVA’S SAVINGS BANK STARTED LONG BEFORE 2014

The President of Mobiasbanca Groupe Societe Generale, Ridha Tekaia, believes that a part of the 1 billion dollars illegally withdrawn from Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank in 2014 has already been re-injected in the country to make some major acquisitions.

In an interview with the Banking and Finance Profit magazine (Moldova), Ridha Tekaia said that "the sickness of BEM did not start in 2014 but much earlier when the bank was controlled by the state".

Asked about who is to blame for the large scale bank fraud, the Mobiasbanca president said: "In any bank, the first responsible person is the shareholder, in this case the state, the second one is the regulator, and the third is the audit company... You also have the supervisory board, the executive directors and finally the managers. I am not an expert to say where exactly the responsibility is but, probably, it is in all these chains, and not only at the managerial level was which pointed out".

Ridha Tekaia strongly supports the plan to liquate the three banks with problems, saying that "Moldova could have an excellent banking sector without a state-owned bank".

"The state has demonstrated several times that it is not able to manage correctly a bank or others companies. It is not its core business. It has so many other things to do in different sectors of the economy that having an additional burden in the person of a bank is useless," Ridha Tekaia said.

According to him, the "liquidation of BEM will have only positive aspects, especially given its complicated ownership structure".

"If we do not liquidate this bank, then one day, when it will be recovered and healthy again thanks to the state contribution, the initial shareholder may appear and ask for compensations. Therefore, it is better to cut these risks and liquidate the bank because it would be much more complicated to restore the entire ownership story," Ridha Tekaia said.

In his opinion, the more the Moldovan authorities are waiting, the less they will find as Banca de Economii has lost almost all its big clients and deposits.

The full interview with President of Mobiasbanca Ridha Tekaia is available in the August issue of the Banking and Finance Profit magazine and at www.profit.md.