The Bucharest Court of Appeals has admitted on Thursday the appeal of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) prosecutors in the case of the revocation of the arrest warrant, issued in absentia, on the name of businessman Elan Schwartzenberg, accused of complicity to bribe giving. The ruling is final, ziare.com reports.
On the name of Elan Schwartzenberg, the European arrest warrant remains in force and also the request of the Romanian authorities for international prosecution.
The magistrates of the Bucharest Court had decided two weeks ago to revoke the preventive arrest warrant ordered for Schwartzenberg, but the DNA prosecutors have challenged the decision.
The businessman is on APB warrant since 2016, his picture appearing on the police website as one of the wanted people.
The National Anti-corruption Directorate argues that the businessman “has hidden 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,” reads the DNA release.
Prosecutors say 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 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.