Someone stole $1 billion from Moldova. That's an eighth of its GDP

I'm posting this story because it hits a little close to home. A few years back I traveled to Moldova because my best friend married a woman from there. I was going to be his Best Man. They ended up postponing the wedding ceremony, and I came home before the wedding. I'll never forget riding the "microbus" (tiny public transportation busses) and paying for potable water from a kiosk each morning.

You could always tell who had the money, by how "finished" their apartment building was. The people with money had enough to pay for the outer facade to be completed.

Someone stole $1 billion from Moldova. That's an eighth of its GDP

When thousands filled the streets of Moldova's capital on Sunday, their complaint was pretty significant.
Late last year, about $1 billion disappeared in an apparent banking scandal that’s mystified Europe’s poorest country.
To put that sum into perspective, it’s an eighth of the country’s GDP. In United States terms, that portion of the economy would add up to more than $2 trillion.

The money reportedly vanished in a series of murky loans dealt out last November by three major banks — one of them state-owned — to as yet unknown recipients.

Officials wised up to the scheme only earlier this year.

Moldova is a former Soviet Block country, and it's mainly an agrarian society (a lot of farming). Some of the best produce I've ever had was when I visited there. They have insanely good watermelons and tomatoes. The article goes on to state:

Igor Botan, a political analyst and a member of the grassroots movement that organized Sunday’s protest, believes the pro-European ruling coalition was complicit in the crime.

“Our country is a poor and agrarian country,” he told GlobalPost on Monday. “But it’s home to decent people who want their country to flourish, to be closer to European standards, and for it to find its economic niche alongside the European Union.”

Moldova has been torn between modernizing and gaining European Union status, and sticking closer to it's Russian/Soviet roots. Many small-time local farmers would go out of business because they wouldn't be able to comply with EU produce standards. There's a big divide in the country over "new" and "old" ways. I remember going to the traditional open air market, and then to a new "super market" just like we have in the USA.

I hope my friend's wife's family is going to be OK. I know he and her still travel to Moldova every now and then.

That's a lot of money to go missing for that country. I would guess the US loses more than that each year to scammers but a billion is not much here. Maybe the country should hire better people to cover up those things like our experts here in America.

Someone over on Reddit did the math to compare what this would be like for US Citizens:

That'd be like someone stealing $6312.50[1] to $6623.22 (calculated from gross GDP divided by the number of citizens) from each citizen in the US.

10,000 people showed up to protest, and that's nothing to sniff at considering the entire population of the country is 3.2 or so million people!

That's interesting... 1 billion to them is equivalent to 2 trillion to the U.S. ... I believe it was announced they "misplaced" over 2 trillion dollars a day before 9/11...

Link

a reply to: MystikMushroom

This is a huge crime and I personally think this smells of Federal Reserve and ECB.