Prince and pauper or How to hide away one's personal fortune

Romanian officials will soon have to disclose the exact amounts in their bank accounts. But only if they do not read the following story.

The Government will change the fortune disclosure law tomorrow, so that, according to this week’s pledges, all officials will have to make their wealth public. To support this social category, whose cover is to be blown away, Ziarul Financiar is publishing a small guide, featuring the simplest, most popular methods that can help someone look (almost) like a pauper. All these methods can be enforced even today, the last day before the Government decision enters effect.

The handiest method seems to be lockbox. “One can go alone in the room where the lockboxes are kept, so that no one knows what actually happens in there – you can stash away even one million euros,” a banker says. One only needs to withdraw the money from the bank account, in cash, and then put it into the safe deposit box. Working time: about two hours, if there is no queue at the bank.

Another method: the amounts in the bank deposits can be transferred into any kind of bearer instruments, papers with a nominal value entrusted to a third person, or can simply be split into several accounts in the name of other people, with the “pauper” the only one entitled to deal with the accounts. This takes a little more time: 3-4 days. And some other problems can arise from divorces, deaths, etc.

Then come the password-protected bearer deposit certificates, made by another person. The password and the certificates give the “prince” absolute control over the deposited amounts. He only needs to trust the respective person.

What does the National Bank of Romania (NBR) have to say about these solutions? “The NBR 3/2002 regulation on the knowledge of banking customers has practically ruled out any possibility of money being deposited in a bank without the deponent being identified… Generally speaking, safe deposit boxes are among those things beyond our control. We only know the name of the people who rent such lokboxes, but not the exact amounts. According to the current legislation, we need a Prosecutor’s Office order to learn the amounts of money involved,” Nicolae Cinteza, head of the NBR banking surveillance division told Ziarul Financiar. At any rate, the law says nothing about a Prosecutor’s Office order.