Mediafax Group news agency was prosecuted for money laundering charges, following a notification filed by the General Anti-Fraud Department. Four persons from the agency’s management have been detained, pending preventive arrest.
The Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court claims that through the defendants’ criminal activity the state budget was prejudiced with almost RON 17 million.
Investigators say that on April 23, 2013 Mediafax Group was allowed a payment schedule file worth almost RON 4 million of the exigible tax liabilities for a 24-month period. “Thus, the company’ s representatives along with some private legal practitioners have set up a scheme of evasion from the tax and levies payment, involving ‘dummy companies’ on the names having no paying capacities.
Precisely, Mediafax was exonerated from the tax payment, transferring this responsibility to other companies.
According to the investigators’ evidence, Roxana Grigoru??, Dana Cozac and Sorin Dinu representing Mediafax together with lawyer Gheorghe Chis were handling this tax evasion operation.
Prosecutors also say the news agency’s management representatives were paying the employees based on freelance copyright contracts registered on the dummy corporations, without allowing them previous negotiations related to their delivery of services.
In retort, Mediafax Group told a press release that it cannot agree to the prosecutors’s point of view, which put copyrights under tax evasion. “We have won in court against the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) and we’ll go on moving for that in court to fight this abuse,” Mediafax says.