About a month ago we mocked the Albanian central bank when reports emerged that “two employees” had been charged with the theft of some $6.6 million in cash from the bank’s vaults. Specifically, back in July the arrests come five weeks after a worker at the central bank admitted to stealing money over the course of four years, taking new bank notes printed in Switzerland when they arrived at his workplace and replacing them with old books. As it turns out, since there is a central bank involved, there is once again more than meets the eye, and the story has since mutated into something far more grotesque than even we could imagine, with news coming out late last week and over the weekend that not only was the theft by “two employees” a misdirection, but that the guilty party was none other than the Albanian version of Janet Yellen, the governor of the central bank himself Ardian Fullani.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
