Businessman Sorin Ovidiu Vintu sentenced to 8 years in prison in the FNI file

Businessman Sorin Ovidiu Vintu was sentenced to eight years in prison in the high-sounding file of the National Investment Fund (FNI) loot. The Bucharest Court of Appeal’s ruling on Tuesday is final.

The Bucharest Tribunal sentenced Vintu in a first court to six years and four months in prison, but he challenged the ruling.

Sorin Ovidiu Vintu was sent to court in this case on September 24, 2012, facing charges of money laundering and abetment in embezzlement.

Initially, the Bucharest Tribunal gave SOV two sentences, each of four years in prison for money laundering, while exonerating him of abetment in embezzlement. Following the merger of the two sentences, the court decided that the businessman should serve six years and four months in jail. Moreover, judges seized almost USD 7.3 M from Vintu, money that he obtained following money laundering.

SOV has been imprisoned at Rahova Penitentiary on July 22, 2016 following a sentence of 6 years and two months in prison in Petromservice file. Next to him, former trade unionist Liviu Luca also got six years in prison.

Vintu has been sentenced in three files so far, with sentences served.

In January 2014 SOV has been sentenced to two years in prison by the Supreme Court in the case of favoring Nicolae Popa, another defendant in the FNI file. Previously, Vintu had been sentenced to 2 years in prison for blackmail Sebastian Ghita.

The National Investment Fund was a company set up by Sorin Ovidiu Vintu in 1996, as a pyramidal financial scheme. However, Vintu sold his shares to Ioana Maria Vlas in 1997. In May 2000, FNI collapsed, leaving about 318,000 investors harmed.

Soon after the fund’s collapse, Vlas fled to Israel but she returned to Romania in 2003 and imprisonned, but it was only in 2009 that a final ruling was pronounced in her case: ten years in prison. However, she is released in 2010. After the release, Vlas admitted her guilt and involvement in the FNI collapse, but claimed that the main artisan of the affair was Sorin Ovidiu Vintu.