Interior Minister Lucian Bode confirmed that investigators are not ruling out any lead in this case, but avoided to reveal the hypotheses. The minister also underlined that Romania is yet ‘a safe country’, despite the mafia-style crime.
“There have been crime attempts through the same modus operandi, but they have not been completed, fortunately. We talk about a single case, Romania is a safe country”, minister Bode said.
Investigators say that the bomb would have been placed under the driver’s seat and would have most probably been detonated remotely by radio waves or by activating a mobile phone on the explosive.
The Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) has ruled out a terrorist attack.
The man who died in the car bomb attack in the parking of a supermarket in Arad on Saturday morning is a well-known local entrepreneur, Ioan Crisan. His car exploded when he wanted to start the car.
Ioan Crisan held one of the few farms of African catfish in Eastern Europe, set up several years ago on the perimeter of a former hemp plant few kilometers away from Arad city. The farm has 22 basins supplied with thermal water from a 900-meter deep drill , and part of these basins are populated with tens of tons of fish.
Ioan Crișan is the father of Laura Bîlcea, the former wife of deputy Sergiu Bîlcea.
Even if the investigation is still young, the media released some hypotheses, one involves his fish business, the other is related to a smuggling cigarette affair.
Ioan Crisan started this business in 2007, investing around EUR 260,000, with money from banks and borrowed from various partners. Sources told Ziare.com that Crisan would have had huge debts and debtors would have pressed him to pay them. There are rumours saying that Crisan would have even had businesses with an Austrian investor of Russian origin.
The second lead is seemingly related to a significant seizure of smuggled cigarettes conducted by the police on May 24 in Sambateni, a locality near Arad. Border policemen seized 600 boxes of smuggled cigarettes from a truck whose driver managed to flee. Some voices claim that businessman Ioan Crisan would have given the tip on the load of smuggled cigarettes and so the smugglers would have got back at him.
“His car exploded when he wanted to start the car.”
Video clip shows the car was started and had moved several meters before the explosion,
so it did NOT explode when he started the car.