Banker, 28, ‘stole cash worth fifth of state’s GDP’
A COURT in Moldova has ordered Israeli businessman Ilan Shor to be held under house arrest for 30 days as part of a fraud investigation into alleged bank transactions which may have caused a loss of $870m — nearly a fifth of the impoverished former Soviet republic’s GDP.
He is accused of defrauding the country’s three biggest banks after he allegedly took control of them through a group of companies and individuals in Russia, Ukraine and Moldova.
Mr Shor, who served as chairman of one of the banks, has been under investigation for the past three months.
The Moldovan National Bank was ordered by the government to offer an emergency loan to the banks to keep them afloat and prevent a financial meltdown of the country.
The details of the affair were made public on May 4 by parliament speaker Andrian Candu, who published a confidential report by the independent US investigative consultancy Kroll.
“We are studying the report and in many respects it confirms what we said earlier about what occurred before the arrival of the private investor and how we were forced to cover it,” Mr Shor said in a statement, implying that he had found irregularities in the banks after his takeover.
Mr Shor, 28, born in Tel Aviv, is the son of millionaire Miron Shor, who made aliyah in 1978 only to return to Moldova in 1990, where he started a business empire in 1994 with a network of duty free shops. He died in 2005.
Mr Shor has various interests in Moldova, among them two TV stations and a football team. He is also involved in Jewish charities.
He married Russian pop star Jasmin — Sara Manahimova, of Jewish Dagestani parentage — in 2011 at the Palace of the Republic in Chisinau where among the guests were top Moldovan politicians.
The allegations against Mr Shor have unleashed a storm of protests against the political class ahead of next month’s local elections, as this scandal could engulf many politicians suspected of corruption.
Shor’s wedding took place at the Palace of the Republic