The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) has decided to give up the appeal in regard to the arrest warrant issued on businessman Elan Schwartzenberg, sources say.
Schwartzenberg is prosecuted since December 2017 by the DNA prosecutors for complicity to brie giving, in a file disjoint from the file on housing building on the ‘Henri Coanda’ campus, in which former Constanta mayor Radu Mazare, his brother Alexandru Mazare and businessman Avraham Mergenstern have been recently acquitted by the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ – Supreme Court), antena3.ro informs.
The National Anti-corruption Directorate argued in August 2018 that the businessman “is hiding away to escape criminal prosecution.”
“In 2011, defendant Schwartzenberg Emilian helped Morgenstern Avraham, the owner of a private company, to give the former mayor of Constanta, Radu Mazare, EUR 175,000 so that the former mayor helps the company win a public auction for the construction of the Henri Coanda social campus, worth around EUR 10 million,” the DNA release read.
Prosecutors said that Schwartzenberg brokered the payment of the EUR 175,000 by interposing an offshore company, where he was a real beneficiary, and on the other hand he facilitated the relation between ex-mayor Radu Mazare and Morgenstern Avraham, as he was friend of both of them.
The offshore company, Melici Management Inc, was registered in the British Virgin Islands and had bank accounts opened in Liechtenstein. All bank transfers were ordered by Schwartzenberg, as actual beneficiary and carried out by another person, according to the DNA.
Romanian Police issued an APB warrant against businessman Elan Schwartzenberg in June 2016. His picture was published on the Police website on Monday after the Bucharest Court issued an arrest warrant in absentia on his name.
The anti-corruption prosecutors asked for Elan Schwartzenberg’s arrest on May 30, 2016, being charged with complicity to bribery. The National Anti-corruption Directorate argued that the businessman “is hiding away to escape criminal prosecution.”