The man is a graduate from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania, Faculty of Economic Sciences, taking a license in banks and stock exchange affairs. Dorin Dragutanu’s career kicked off at a commercial bank in Moldova, in 1996. For two years he worked at a commercial bank in the currency operations section.

In 1998 Dorin Dragutanu got hired at PricewaterhouseCoopers Moldova (PwC Moldova) as an audit assistant. During the period 2003-2005 he acted as the country manager in this organization. The former Moldovan parliament speaker Andrian Candu also worked at PwC Moldova during the same period.

In September 2005, Mr. Dragutanu was assigned at PricewaterhouseCoopers Serbia, where in 2008 he earned a promotion to the post of director for financial services in the audit unit; he also handled the financial audit activities in the bank sector of Central and Eastern Europe.

On 6 November 2009, at the proposal of then Speaker Mihai Ghimpu, the Parliament elected Mr. Dragutanu as the new governor of the National Bank of Moldova; he stayed in that office until getting sacked in April 2016. It was during that period the domestic bank system was shaken by numerous raider attacks and money laundering schemes, most notably the Russian Laundromat that dried Russia’s public coffers out of 20 billion US dollars and a bank fraud that left a one-billion-dollar hole in the Moldovan bank sector. Three domestic banks - Banca de Economii, Unibank, and Banca Sociala - have been shut down permanently as a result of the fraud. Before getting robbed, Banca de Economii had been a state-owned institution.

Dorin Dragutanu handed in his resignation on 21 September 2015 citing “attacks” from opponents on him personally and on the central bank. He pointed among others to then-Prime Minister Valeriu Streleț as an impediment in the way of an investigation conducted by US-based Kroll company into the fraud. The Parliament though turned down his resignation and Mr. Dragutanu remained in office until April next year.

Upon leaving the public service the ex-governor founded an audit and consultancy firm and shortly earned decent contracts from a number of companies including Moldovatransgaz and ASITO.

Dorin Dragutanu has been formally in the status of “suspect” since December 2019 - no indictment or arrest though - in the bank robbery investigation, with alleged roles in money laundering at large scale as part of an organized group. His properties and assets have been under sequester ever since.

Officials close to the investigation say “the damage from the actions of Dragutanu and other bankers” stands at more than 2 billion lei.

Finally, on March 6 2020, one day after the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office conducted criminal proceedings at the NBM headquarters and detained several persons, Dorin Dragutanu was placed in preventive detention for a period of 30 days. The former governor of the NBM has declared that he does not admit the charges brought against him, which he considers to be unfounded.