The court ruling on Friday July 13 creates a dangerous precedent because thousands of people who received Fondul Proprietatea shares before the fund’s stock exchange listing are in the same situation and could go to court to get their due compensations.
C. Neamtu is due to collect 1.7 million lei (EUR372,390) and return the shares he received in Fondul Proprietatea to the state, according to the court ruling. The decision can be appealed.
“The court can repair an injustice that the state made when it forced former owners to get shares in Fondul Proprietatea ahead of its listing, because if they sell their shares on the stock exchange now, they collect only half the compensation they are due,” lawyer Iulian Lepa, who represented Neamtu in court, told ZF.
C. Neamtu is one of the over five thousand people who received a total of 62% of the fund’s shares before the fund got listed on the stock exchange in January 2011.
Before Fondul Proprietatea was listed, former owners received shares in the fund from the Government-controlled authority in charge of compensations, at a nominal value of 1 leu per share. So for compensations worth one million lei, a former owner received one million shares.
This proved very disadvantageous for former owners because after the fund got listed on the stock exchange, one Fondul Proprietatea share is worth less than RON0.5.
The low price is partly due to the years of postponements, to the political interests at the top of Fondul Proprietatea and to the situation of some of the state-run companies where the fund is a shareholder.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)