Masked individuals robbing a bank, cars taking off in full gear and car chases on the streets. Movie scripts aside, these things are real in the West and in countries closer to Romania, such as Hungary. They do not happen in Romania, though. How come?
“The local currency (the ROL i.e.) is not attractive enough for such operations. Around here, a hold-up like this means stealing a truckload of cash. This is one of the reasons, I believe,” a banking security consultant who did not want his name revealed told Ziarul Financiar. And this happens even though, access to the vault is too easy to gain in many banks’ case, experts on the market say.
Albeit the ROL is so weak, there really are valuables in Romania, and the business of keeping them safe is growing year by year. The overall security services market in 2003 is estimated to 30-35 million euros and banks are among the most important clients. Providing banking security takes large investments in protection systems, Traian Pometcu, head of National Bank of Romania’s security department said ding the “Valuables protection” conference organised by Finmedia on Tuesday.
“It is true that accounting departments in some banks tend to go for the lowest bidder (of all the security solution providers i.e.), whereas a bank needs a top-notch security system,” Pometcu explains.
Traian Pometcu is actually the head of those guarding the biggest treasure in Romania, NBR’s treasure.
He told Ziarul Financiar, “the NBR has an integrated security system put in place since 1991-1992, starting from the critical locations, such as the bank’s treasure or the NBR’s gold reserve, and gradually developed to encompass the entire territorial network of the central bank, whose implementation was finished in 1997.” The investment in this programme was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2.5 million, Pometcu says. He co-ordinates about 50 security department employees within NBR, with the guard and security duties for the entire NBR network fulfilled with the help of gendarmes. The foreign currency reserve of the central bank amounted to some $6.2bn at the end of June, with securities accounting for 86% of it. adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro