Alro scandal goes from bad to worse

The former chairman of primary aluminium producer Alro Slatina, Alexander Krasner, and former company vice-chairman, Peter Braun, have gone to the courts to try and obtain an invalidation of the decision of the General Meeting of Shareholders made two weeks ago.

The two managers have been locked in conflict with Alro”s majority shareholder, Russian oligarch Vitaly Matshytsky, for a number of months. Alro is one of Romania”s largest companies with a market capitalisation of 500 million euros.

At the General Meeting of Shareholders Matshytsky decided not to approve the relieving of duties for the two managers for the period in 2004 when they were administrators of Alro.

Not having been relieved of their duties means the company or its shareholders can sue the administrators over how they ran the business.

“Together with Alexander Krasner I took Alro to court to request that the decision to deny our relief of duties be invalidated. We do not believe this is correct since that the administrators” report for the same year was endorsed by the shareholders,” Braun said.

He added that so far no complaint against the two for how they ran Alro had been filed with the courts.

Matshytsky was unavailable for comment.

At the same time, Alexander Krasner is also involved in a lawsuit with the Russian oligarch in London in which he claims the latter had prevented him from exerting his right to sell his Alro stock.

The Alro scandal broke at the end of October of last year when Krasner and Braun and another member of Alro”s management resigned.

Based on market information, it appears the resignation of the three was connected to financial differences with the Russian oligarch and differences in terms of their visions for the Alro management. It was at that time that Matshytsky, the real owner of Alro, surfaced. Matshytsky is a businessman known in the Russian Federation for controlling Rinko petroleum group.

Through the Marco Group, Matshytsky controls around 80% of Alro”s shares. The state owns a further 18.2%, and the rest are held by small shareholders.

Alro”s takeover cost Marco International, the vehicle through which the Russian businessman controls Alro, around 160 million dollars. Alro is currently worth nearly 500 million euros on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

Alro Slatina makes aluminium in the form of ingots, cables, and bars. Last year it had an output of 215,000 tonnes.