Ex-PSD MP Cristian Rizea, accused of not paying accommodation, travel bills

Former SocDem deputy Cristian Rizea is accused of cheating the owners of a travel agency and of a restaurant and of not paying the bills for several services.

The owner of Paralela 45 travel agency, Alin Burcea, also president of the National Association of Travel Agencies, on Wednesday posted on Facebook the message “If you see Cristian Rizea, tell him he had to pay the tickets to the Paralela 45!”.

The travel agency’s owner says that Rizea has been owing EUR 4,000 to the travel agency for 2 years, for ten air-travel tickets on Bucharest-Nice route that the former deputy has purchased from Paralela 45 without actually paying them. Burcea says that he has been trying to recover the money for 2 years now.

At that moment, Rizea was the leader of the PSD District 5 branch, with Burcea saying he has trusted Rizea, as he was MP in the Romanian Parliament, so the businessman thought he was a reliable person.

Burcea called Rizea a ‘serial charlatan’, adding the former deputy is changing his mobile phone number once in two weeks so he could not be tracked down.

The information comes after a restaurant owner from Vaslui had stated on Tuesday that Rizea and George Tardea, former PRU (United Romania Party) candidates in the 2016 general elections, had set their campaign HQs in his hotel and that they had left without paying the food and accommodation. The two had to pay EUR 10,000. The hotel has cashed in not a single penny.

The hotel owner from Vaslui recounted that Georghe Tardea accommodated in the hotel on October 31 and his colleague Cristian Rizea joined him the next day. The two informed the hotel they would stay there for at least one month and have asked three meals a day, saying they will pay when checking out.

The hotel staff says that the two politicians used to order a lot of food and all kind of sophisticated dishes, and some of the most expensive drinks.

However, immediately after the elections, the two left without giving the key back or paying.

“They argued that their money allotted in the campaign are still blocked in the party’s accounts and they would pay after the elections. I trusted their promise. They haven’t practically checked out, they left separately, didn’t leave the hotel key. We didn’t know they left, they carried their luggage on the sly,” said Razvan Condurache, the hotel manager.

Tardea retorted to that, arguing the party has to pay for their accommodation, for they went to work for the party. Yet, the head of the PRU Vaslui organization, Tiberiu Nechita, says the party doesn’t have to pay at all and that the two politicians have been ousted from the party precisely because of this incident.