The same goes for other financial supervisory authorities such as the National Bank of Romania (BNR), the Insurance Supervisory Commission and the Private Pension Supervisory Commission, whose bosses collect much more than Romania’s economy can justify. The Insurance Supervisory Commission and BNR’s heads have been keeping their incomes secret for many years.
Carmen Negoita, vice-president of the National Securities Commission, made 423,548 lei (USD133,000) in 2010, according to the financial disclosure statement of her husband, Liviu Negoita, Bucharest’s Sector 3 mayor.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Mary Schapiro, who supervises two markets trading USD120 billion in stocks every day–NASDAQ and NYSE–made USD158,500 in 2008, according to UK’s Times publication. In comparison, the market supervised by the Romanian Commission, with a daily traded volume of USD15 million, is virtually non-existent.
Carmen Negoita was appointed in the commission for a five-year term by the Parliament in 2007, backed by the Democratic Liberal Party (PD-L), where her husband is a member.
She collected RON391,000 (about USD128,000) in 2009, more than the commission’s president, Gabriela Anghelache, who got RON274,500 (some USD90,000), according to the financial disclosure statements published on the National Integrity Agency’s website. The commission’s website, where the commissioners’ statements are published does not reveal salary incomes.
Neither the president nor the vice-president could be reached for comment by edition close.
The other members of the commission, too, made more than USD100,000 in 2009.
In Romania, where the capital market failed to work as a source of funding for the economy, the compensations the market supervisors get are much higher than the incomes of brokers or fund managers. Most of the times this is a political appointment and is the peak of one’s career, whereas in the US, the SEC pays much less than what Wall Street brokers make.