On July 17, the President of the Competition Council, Bogdan Chiriţoiu, told a press conference in Ramnicu Valcea that his institution is currently conducting an investigation into alleged misconduct on the part of leasing companies and parent banks of leasing companies.
“We have an investigation in which we have suspicions of unfair behaviour of financial firms, that is leasing companies and parent banks of leasing companies. We see in a few months whether our suspicions are confirmed or not, if we impose fines or not” said the head of the Competition Council.
He said that, in connection with ROBOR, the Competition Council still has other ongoing actions, especially banking market surveillance and monitoring.
“Please note that there is no single ROBOR action. We have an analysis, an investigation we are doing on the banking sector We have made a series of recommendations to improve the legal framework for operation, in particular the transposition of a European directive on Payment Services. We are the only country in the European Union that has not yet transposed the directive. So, out of 28 Member States, we are the last one to have not yet transposed the Payment Services Directive and, we believe, the transposition of this directive would increase competition in the marketplace and lead to a drop in bank fees. We are also monitoring the banking market situation and this is part of the monitoring we were doing about the effects of Ordinance 114, an end-of-year ordinance that introduced a series of changes in major sectors of the economy and I wanted to make sure that these tax changes do not lead to unjustified price increases. And we look to see if the impact of Rule 114 on ROBOR does not show an incorrect behaviour of economic agents. We’re working at the moment, but we do not have hints to trigger an investigation. We oversee the market, we monitor, but we have no clues yet to lead us to an investigation”, Chiriţoiu said.
Regarding the conclusion of the Economic Commission in the Senate in spring, according to which the ROBOR index was manipulated, the conclusion for which even the dismissal of Chiriţoiu was demanded, the head of the Competition Authority stated that this has nothing to do with the current situation on the banking market.
“As for the parliamentary committee, you’d better talk to them because I, at least, have no idea to tell you what is happening, what is not happening, because it was not our investigation. It was an investigation that the committee wanted to do. They made a report. I cannot say further, but it has strictly targeted offenses committed in 2008 or allegedly committed by banks in 2008 and how they have been analysed by the Council, our decision being finalized in 2013. So they have nothing to do with any handling of ROBOR in our days”, Chiriţoiu said.
