The accounting situation of FNI (National Investments Fund) and SOV Invest will be assessed within 30 days, to the end of scheduling payment resuming, the National Securities Commission (CNVM) and FNI’s Investors Confidence Council decided yesterday. Meanwhile, an external independent censor will draw up a report on the current situation of the fund’s assets.
SOV Invest chairman Ioana Maria Vlas yesterday announced her resignation from the position she held, in a letter addressed to investors and sent to Mediafax news agency.
The letter that was sent to the media is handwritten and signed Ioana Maria Vlas. The text does not specify where Maria Vlas can be reached at this moment or her intentions for the following period.
“We are now facing the most difficult period of FNI’s existence, when most investors have filed in redeeming applications, following rumours launched on the market by occult circles whose only aim is to destabilise the entire Romanian financial-banking system,” the letter shows. However, it does not offer any information on the current situation of FNI, merely presenting the evolution of FNI while Vlas was head of SOV Invest. Vlas invoked health reasons to justify her leaving. “Considering that the pressure of the last days has proven much more powerful than me, a human being with ordinary physical and psychological limits, I feel compelled by my health to step down from the management of the administering company SOV Invest SA,” the letter also reads.
The gates of the National Investments Fund were locked yesterday, too, while the pending collapse of the fund made other investment funds depositors submit more redeeming applications than usual.
Depositors of the National Accumulation Fund (FNA), Gelsor Investment Fund (FIG) and Gelsor Foreign Currency Fund (FVG) were the most determined to recoup their money.
“On Tuesday, we paid 2 billion lei, yesterday 12 billion and today we have not centralised data yet,” Adrian Radu, executive manager of Asset Gelsor Management, administering FIG and FVG, told Ziarul Financiar.
The two investment funds, having assets of 250 billion and 3.3 million dollars, respectively, are perceived as associated with FNI and FNA.
“People associate the past ownership structure of FNI manager with the current structure of the two funds,” market sources said.
The main shareholder of Asset Gelsor Management is businessman Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, whose initials make up the name of FNI managing company, SOV Invest. However, he has no ties with this company, at least not formally.
FCEx also registered withdrawals higher than usual, “but there is no liquidity problem,” according to the director of SIRA Invest managing company, Dan Nicu. He thinks that the current situation is not similar to SAFI crisis of 1996, because at that time there were no laws, while now there were, but they were not abided by.
CNVM chairman atefan Boboc maintained yesterday, when heard by the budget-finances Commission within the Senate, that the scandal around FNI was stirred by numerous “rumours and false statements.”
Analysing the Fund’s financial data may take at least 30 days, as there is no centralised information for the entire country at this point. Angelescu said he tried to trace Maria Vlas both at the hospitals in Transylvania and in Otopeni Airport records, with no result, and that he was to get in touch with the General Office of the Border Police.”