Seven or eight energy traders generated total losses of 440 million lei to the suppliers of last resort and the network operators, losses that will be recovered in court, stated Niculae Havrilet, President of the Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE), according to Agerpres.
All these suppliers will pay „cutting” fines and three or four of them will lose the license, also said Havrilet.
The measures have been decided following the completion of the investigation on the incident in January, when the energy price continuously increased on the spot market and reached the historical record of over 650 lei per MWh by the end of the month, double compared to the first days of the year.
Several traders terminated then the contracts they had with the consumers, to sell energy on the spot market at much higher prices.
In this case, ANRE has conducted checks on 18 companies and decided to penalize seven-eight of them:
„It is about a group of seven to eight suppliers in various stages of investigation and penalty, and we are talking about overall losses of 440 million lei that will not be passed on to the consumers.
This is the first time when the regulator does not socialise these costs. They are calculated to the account of these traders, some of which went bankrupt or became insolvent in dealing with the banks that have financed them,” explained Havrilet for Agerpres.
In mid-February, ANRE withdrew the supply licenses held by the traders Arelco Power and Arelco Energy, and other firms are to lose their licenses in the coming days:
„The regulatory board will receive a request from the control and specialized departments with proposals for withdrawing – suspending three or four traders from the group of the seven-eight traders”, said the President of ANRE.
The Transenergo license cannot be withdrawn, a trader that became insolvent in January, because their insolvency plan is based on this document, also explained Niculae Havrilet.
