Former Finance Minister, Mihai Tanasescu came at the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) on Friday, to be officially informed that he is prosecuted in the Rompetrol II criminal file. Tanasescu is charged with setting up an organized criminal group, abuse of office and complicity to embezzlement.
About three weeks ago, president Klaus Iohannis has signed the organized crime prosecutors’ requests to start prosecution of four former ministers involved in the Rompetrol II case, namely Mihai Tanasescu, Dan Ioan Popescu, Sebastian Vladescu and Gheorghe Pogea.
A graduate from the finance and accounting faculty of the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Mihai Tanasescu started as an economist at the Finance Ministry and went to work at the World Bank in 1997 until 2000.
From 2000 to 2004, he was Finance Minister in the Adrian Nastase cabinet. In 2004, he was elected as a deputy on the lists of the Social Democrat Party. He served until May 2007, when he resigned. Following his resignation, he became Romania’s representative at the International Monetary Fund, while in 2012, he was named a vice president of the European Investment Bank.
The DIICOT says that during September — October 2003, Mihai Tanasescu and the Economy and Commerce minister, Dan Ioan Popescu, as former Finance ministers, have “exercised their job duties in bad faith, after a bargain with Dan Costache Patriciu, George Philip Stephenson and Alexandru Nicolcioiu with the purpose to initiate and promote an Emergency Ordinance by the Government (OUG) 118/2003 through which the outstanding debts of SC Rompetrol Rafinare SA, at 30:09:2003, worth rd USD 603,000,000 were converted to bonds subscribed by the Public Finances Ministry.”
The above-mentioned emergency ordinance was adopted in the Government sitting on 24 October 2003, with non-observance of the law and of the mandatory steps required by the law.
In early May, the DIICOT has seized the Rompetrol refinery, with 14 persons prosecuted, among whom Sorin Marin, former business partner of Dinu Patriciu and shareholder with the Rompetrol company; Alexandru Nicolcioiu, Director of Manufacturing with KazMunayGas International (former Rompetrol Grup), Adrian Constantin Volintiru, former president of the State Assets Capitalization Agency (AVAS); the US citizens George Philip Stephenson and Colin Richard Hart.
Prosecutors also seized movable and immovable property with the KazMunayGas International NV, SC Oilfield Exploration Business Solutions SA and SC Rompetrol Rafinare SA, with a view to recover the following amounts of money: RON 1,724,168,825, USD 290,786,616 and EUR 34,941,924.
The DIICOT prosecutors say that in 1998, Dinu Patriciu and Sorin Marin, together with the US citizens George Philip Stephenson and Colin Richard Hart have masterminded a cross-border crime group focused on developing broad activities in order to mislead the Romanian authorities on the occasion of sealing some privatization contracts. This group was subsequently added to, some other persons: Florin Eric Chis (with double citizenship, Israeli and Romanian) Alexandru Nicolcioiu, Adrian Volintiru, as well as decision-making staff with the State Property Fund (FPS) or with the Government.