Nordis Case: Laura Vicol and Vladimir Ciorbă, detained. Dozens of Raids in Romania and Monaco, 72 Suspects

11 people detained in total. Former President Basescu's daughter, Ioana Basescu, indicted, as notary in this case.

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Laura Vicol and Vladimir Ciorbă, her husband, were detained for 24 hours in the Nordis case after extensive house searches in Romania and Monaco had been conducted earlier in the day.
At the end of the marathon hearings in the Nordis case, prosecutors have detained 11 people, including the former head of the Legal Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Vicol, her husband, Vladimir Ciorbă, the group’s main shareholder, as well as several directors of the company, DIICOT announced on Tuesday. Prosecutors are proposing the preventive arrest of all 11 detainees.
Among those detained are Gheorghe Poştoacă, shareholder in Nordis Group companies, Florin Poştoacă, sales director, and Sanda Răileanu, economic director.
Among those questioned by prosecutors in the Nordis case were Ioana Băsescu, the eldest daughter of former president Traian Băsescu, and former PSD deputy Andreea Cosma, daughter of former Baron of Prahova Mircea Cosma. Ioana Băsescu and Andreea Cosma were involved in transactions as notaries.
Laura Vicol, former head of the legal committee in the Chamber of Deputies, wrote on Facebook during raids yesterday: “The show has begun,” a message she later deleted.
According to DIICOT, the group had been operating since 2018 and was structured on three hierarchical levels, operating through a pyramid system in the real estate sector. The leaders of the group, Vladimir Ciorbă, Emanuel Poștoacă and Alexandru Mihai, allegedly created a mechanism through which they tricked clients into buying apartments that they never received. They were actively helped in the second echelon of the group by family and friends, including Laura Vicol. And in the third echelon, prosecutors say, there were notaries and lawyers who made tabulations, sale-purchase contracts and offered legal advice.
In this way, they allegedly embezzled a total of 71 million euros. In addition to salaries and payments through various companies, the group members also used the money for personal pleasures, the investigators also note. The money actually paid by customers amounts to almost 200 million euros, but part of it was used for constructions that were not completed.
One of the victims says that he was left without 220,000 euros after deciding to buy two apartments from Nordis. Marius Dragu, Nordis victim: “I paid 100% for two apartments. Although one is 100% ready, I am not the owner, but appear on a list of creditors. I have spoken to dozens of creditors who confirm this, there are all kinds of categories of people who have invested all their life savings, others have invested the money they did not have, they have taken out loans.”
On Monday morning, Police and prosecutors conducted 63 house searches in Bucharest and several counties, as well as 2 in Monaco, on Monday, February 3, in a criminal case involving several crimes, including the formation of an organized criminal group, embezzlement and money laundering, the Romanian Police announced.
The searches took place in the Nordis case, and among those targeted is Nordis boss Vladimir Ciorbă, according to G4media, which cites judicial sources.
The searches were in Bucharest and in the counties of Ilfov, Constanţa, Galaţi, Giurgiu, Bistriţa-Năsăud and Prahova.
Notary Ioana Băsescu, daughter of former president Traian Băsescu, also arrived at the DIICOT headquarters for questioning. Andreea Cosma, notary, former PSD deputy and daughter of former PSD Baron of Prahova Mircea Cosma, is also scheduled to be questioned.
Judicial sources told HotNews.ro that all the people questioned in this case are suspects. The same sources say that Ioana Băsescu and Andreea Cosma are suspected of having been involved in the transactions, as notaries.
Ioana Băsescu has been charged with supporting the alleged organized crime group, according to Digi24 sources. Prosecutors have not ordered any preventive measures for the former president’s daughter.
Following the over 60 searches carried out on Monday in Bucharest and several counties, as well as in Monaco, over 50 computer systems and data storage devices (laptops, tablets, a server, memory sticks and external hard drives), mobile phones, amounts of money in lei, euros and other currencies, documents and luxury items – watches, jewelry and luxury handbags – were found and seized. The DIICOT investigation targets 72 suspects – 40 individuals and 32 companies, and the group had been operating since 2018 and was structured on three hierarchical levels, operating through a pyramid system in the real estate sector.
According to DIICOT prosecutors, the “Nordis scheme” was organized on three levels, and the last level includes notaries and lawyers who are accused of having supported the organized criminal group, “having the duties of preparing the documentation related to the real estate sales operations, tabulation or legal advice and of collecting sums of money from the commission of the crime of embezzlement, under various justification titles”.
The charges in the case concern “the commission of the crimes of forming an organized criminal group, embezzlement with particularly serious consequences, money laundering, tax evasion, fraud with particularly serious consequences”, the Romanian Police reported.
The investigation targets 72 suspects – 40 individuals and 32 companies. According to DIICOT, the group had been operating since 2018 and was structured on three hierarchical levels, operating through a pyramid system in the real estate sector.

According to G4Media, among those targeted by the searches is the main shareholder of Nordis, Vladimir Ciorbă, the husband of the former PSD head of the Legal Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Vicol, and a search is also taking place at the company’s headquarters on Aviatorilor Blvd. in the capital.

“The investigations carried out to date, targeting 72 individuals (40 individuals and 32 legal entities), revealed that, starting in 2018, three of them had initiated and constituted an organized criminal group, structured on a three-tier pyramid model, which had conceived and implemented a complex criminal mechanism, consisting of promoting and developing real estate projects, under the cover of several commercial companies, followed by collecting sums of money from clients (buyers), embezzling company funds, misleading buyers following the execution of pre-contracts and sale-purchase contracts, highlighting fictitious operations in the accounting of controlled companies for the purpose of evading the payment of taxes and duties due to the state budget and establishing taxes in bad faith (VAT), resulting in obtaining, without right, sums of money as reimbursements or refunds from the state budget.” state, or compensations due to the general budget, causing damage to commercial companies, purchasing clients and the state budget”, the Romanian Police reported.
The illicit financial funds thus obtained were allegedly subjected to the money laundering process.The investigations carried out revealed that the second echelon of the organized crime group was formed by people close to the leaders (in a relationship of kinship or friendship), who joined the group and actively supported it, through various means, under their control and guidance, and the last level supported the organized criminal group, on certain components or during certain periods, having the duties of preparing the documentation related to the operations of selling real estate, apartment building, tabulation or legal consultancy (notaries and lawyers) and of collecting sums of money from the commission of the crime of embezzlement, under various justification titles”, say the investigators.
Laura Vicol’s wealth
The former head of the Chamber of Deputies Commission, involved with her husband, Vladimir Ciorbă, in the Nordis scandal, owns a collection of watches and jewelry worth close to one million euros. While dozens of searches are taking place in Bucharest and Monaco on Monday in this case, the two were brought in for questioning.
According to the most recent wealth declaration, from the summer of last year, Laura Vicol owns, together with her husband, two plots of land, two apartments and jewelry and watches worth 850,000 euros.
Vicol had more than half a million euros in her accounts and loans of almost 400,000 euros. In 2023, Vicol earned 140,000 lei from her position as a deputy, while her husband, Vladimir Ciorbă, earned almost 250,000 from his salary.
Laura Vicol defends herself, denies apartments being sold twice
In a TV show at the end of January, Laura Vicol dismissed all the accusations as an “execution against her.” “I didn’t understand why this execution was done when no one asked me what it was about. Nordis had assets to cover anything. There was no apartment sold twice. Legally you can’t do this,” said Laura Vicol.
“The company in which my husband is a partner was labeled as a PSD company. Its image was destroyed because of this,” the former deputy insisted. Nordis is a Romanian company. At home, I am a mother, a wife, and a husband. If someone imagines that I go home and ask what else he did at Nordis and he asks what I did in Parliament, I think they are completely lying. In the year and a half since all these problems began, I have obviously learned and know certain things that are now in the sights of criminal investigations.”
She denied all the accusations in the public space regarding the activity of her husband’s company. My husband is not a majority partner, there are 5 partners. My husband did not sell apartments, there was a sales department. (…) There is no legal possibility in Romania to sell an apartment twice, the notary who does this cannot have a sale-purchase deed twice. Four or five insolvency processes, Nordis paid 22 billion in these processes that were closed. They never wanted to enter insolvency. When you give the money back to those who gave you the advance, the apartment is returned. This company still had 1000 free apartments, how can you sell it twice?
Asked directly by moderator Denise Rifai if she feels guilty, Vicol replied: “I have 3 children at home, do you think for even a second that I would expose my children or would I agree that someone in my house would commit a crime?”
As for PM Ciolacu’s flying with Nordis to Monaco, Vicol confirmed that she flew with Marcel Ciolacu on private planes.A few times with him and without (no. flew with Nordis)” .
Asked precisely how many times, she answered: “I think two or three times”.
However, she argued that all these attacks came for electoral reasons because it was the campaign for the presidential elections. “This is the second time in my life that I have been executed innocently. It is starting to feel like deja-vu. My husband did not pay for the flights, contrary to what those who have been throwing stones up to this point have said. Everyone paid for their share of these flights“, Vicol stated.
PM Ciolacu reacts on DIICOT raids
Marcel Ciolacu had, on Monday, in Parliament, a first reaction to the DIICOT investigation targeting Nordis. Asked about his relationship with Nordis owner Vladimir Ciorbă and his wife Laura Vicol, former PSD head of the Legal Committee in the Chamber of Deputies, the prime minister claimed that he had not spoken to them for two years.
Questioned by journalists how he sees the fact that Laura Vicol and her husband Vladimir Ciobă are being questioned by DIICOT in the Nordis case, Ciolacu said that it is “very good”: “It means that justice is working”.
Asked about his relationship with the Vicol-Ciorbă family, Marcel Ciolacu said that “we have not communicated for over two years”.
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