The man behind Romania’s largest bank bankruptcy wins EUR 4.7 mln salary compensation in local court

The Bucharest Court recently decided that Razvan Temesan, the former president of Bancorex, one of Romania’s largest state banks, which went bankrupt in 1999, should receive more than EUR 4.7 million in compensation from BCR, because his management contract with Bancorex was unlawfully terminated in 1997. Basically, what the court decided is that BCR, now a private business, owned by Austrian group Erste, should pay Temesan as if he had still been general manager of Bancorex or as if he had had a corresponding top management position in BCR (CEO or executive vice president) in the last five and a half years (from February 2009 until September 2014). He was awarded a monthly salary compensation of EUR 70,000, or a total of more than EUR 4.6 million. To this sum, the court also added EUR 100,000 for moral damages. BCR can appeal the decision. Back in 2011, Temesan won a similar case in which the court decided that BCR should pay him EUR 625,000 in due salaries, for the period May 2005 to December 2007, and EUR 30,000 for moral damages. Temesan was president of Bancorex from 1992 to 1997 and who was prosecuted for the bank’s bankruptcy in 1999, but later acquitted. However, the Romanian media continued to nickname him Bancorex' undertaker. Bancorex, which was Romania’s state bank that handled the country’s international commercial and financial relations until 1989 and even after the fall of the communist regime, remained a behemoth. Its bankruptcy was determined by low interest loans granted to firms controlled by local businessmen with strong connections to Romania’s political leaders at that time and to the secret services -the new rich of the transition period. Most of these loans were never repaid. When it went under in 1999, the bank had USD 1 billion in non-performing loans which have not been recovered to this day. Its viable assets and deposits were transferred to Banca Romana Romana (BCR). BCR was privatized in 2005, when Austrian group Erste took over. Temesan was removed from his position of president and CEO of Bancorex in March 1997, following a decision of the bank’s general shareholders’ meeting. He appealed the decision in court. After the bank went bankrupt, he was charged in several criminal cases related to the event, but he was acquitted of all charges. In March this year, Temesan said in a TV interview that he had also worked as an undercover officer for Romania’s External Information Service (SIE). His task was to find and recover the money in the secret foreign accounts of the Ceausescu family. He said he found part of it, but the state never recovered the sums because “extremely powerful people” had taken it. editor@romania-insider.com (Photo source: caption from Digi 24 news station)