AVAS moves on to litigations

Dealing with the lawsuits in which the Romanian State is involved has become the main priority of the State Assets Resolution Authority (AVAS), the institution’s chairman Mircea Ursache on Tuesday said. “Our biggest problem for the time being is not continuing to recover the banking, budgetary or commercial receivables (…) but dealing with the lawsuits in which the State is involved. These are very important things as they entail the State’s responsibility towards the public funds,” Ursache said. He mentioned in this regard the suits related to the National Investment Fund (FNI), Bancorex, Banca Comerciala Romana and Resita Steel Plant (CSR). Mircea Ursache added AVAS should expand its bad debt resolution portfolio to the entire banking sector. “I am thinking of promoting a normative act that would allow us to take over receivables from fully privately-held banks. At present AVAS can only take over credits from those banks that are partly privately-held,” Ursache said. AVAS estimates its total revenues for this year to stand at 17,077bn ROL (more than 416 million euros), most of which coming from privatisations. ZF