From Reuters:
Albania's central bank governor Ardian Fullani was arrested on Friday evening in his office on charges of abuse of office over the theft of 713 million lek (6.63 million US dollar) from the bank's vaults, the prosecutor's office told Reuters.Guess he has shared quite a bit of the nearly $7 million in CTRL-P proceeds with the supervisory board then. However, kickbacks or not, the disgraced money printer will find it next to impossible to print his way out of trouble now that the board appears to have changed its mind for whatever reason:
Fullani had refused to step down despite protests by citizens who started a petition to demand his dismissal. He had won a confidence vote in the supervisory board by a landslide. Fullani is the 17th bank employee to be arrested in the case.
Albania's central bank board has proposed to parliament that governor Ardian Fullani be sacked after his arrest in connection with the theft of 713 million lek ($6.63 million) from the bank's vaults by an employee, the board said on Sunday.But they had not problems with voting for Fullani a month ago: did the hush money kickbacks get clawed back?
Fullani's fellow board members argued he had "violated ethical rules and heavily damaged the interests of the Bank of Albania".
"We believe the absence of the governor does not create an institutional vacuum in the management of the institution since the law clearly
enables the first deputy governor to take over the governor's competences," the board statement said.
Elisabeta Gjoni, the first deputy governor, will now be the acting governor.And this is where it gets hilarious:
Fullani was arrested on Friday evening on charges of "abuse of office" and the bank's inspector general, Elivar Golemi, was held too, the 19th person at the bank to be prosecuted over the theft.
The prosecutor's office said Fullani had failed to plug gaps in oversight at the treasury due to a lack of personnel and regulations, all of which had made the theft possible. He risks a seven-year jail sentence if convicted. A court in the capital Tirana ruled on Sunday that he should await trial in jail.
Maksim Haxhia, Fullani's lawyer who met him in court on Sunday, told Reuters Fullani declared himself "absolutely innocent" of the charges.Well, there is the open question of how much the scapegoat "admitting" to the crime was paid by the central bank head in order to take all the blame.
Haxhia said the charge was a "dangerous precedent" and the order to await trial in jail was so tough it was "ridiculous".
"The head of an institution can never be held responsible when someone else has admitted a crime. We have an actual person admitting it. Why should the top director pay?," Haxhia said. "This is a very dangerous precedent," he told Reuters by phone.
But we agree: it truly set a dangerous precedent when suddenly it becomes painfully obvious that even central bankers are subject to the same rules and regulations as everyone else.
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