Only one case investigated by DNA in the Port of Constanța has resulted in a prison sentence for the defendants in the entire history of the institution, according to a documentation done by Info Sud-Est. Over the years, DNA has prosecuted several defendants in other cases, but they have either been acquitted, received suspended sentences or the cases are still pending in court. Please note that the documentation only covers crimes committed in the Port of Constanța, not the files concerning the municipality or the county of Constanța.
In 2015, former customs officer and port director Eugen Bogatu received two years and six months in prison for aiding and abetting a criminal and influence peddling in a case involving illegal VAT returns. Three others went to prison with him. Otherwise, over the past 20 years, DNA prosecutors have raided the port on several occasions and prosecuted high-profile cases that ultimately failed to convince judges.
Below, Info Sud-Est presents the main cases that anti-corruption prosecutors have brought to the port and their outcome.
From the “Fleet” case, with 80 defendants, including Traian Băsescu, to the “Port of Constanța” case, in which 39 defendants were tried, including a senator and port bosses, the major anti-corruption cases in the port were closed and all defendants acquitted. There is one exception: that of the director of the Port Authority, Eugen Bogatu, who allegedly bribed the Port Authority for 20 billion lei.
One of the most recent port cases before the court, which has not yet received a verdict, is that of the stenograms from the office of former USR minister Cătălin Drulă, in which two influential liberals allegedly tried to intervene with the minister to save the jobs of two public officials: the head of the Romanian Association for the Rescue of Human Lives at Sea (ARSVOM) and that of the Lower Danube River Administration in Galati in office.
- 2022: “Minister, I’ll do what you want! Help me with this guy only 4 months. Keep him on board for four months and after that I promise I won’t come back to bother you with it”
DNA Constanța prosecutors raided the Ministry of Transport and 20 other locations in Ilfov, Bucharest and Constanța in June 2021, where they raided a file on influence peddling, money laundering and setting up a criminal group.
The people concerned were employees of the Romanian Agency for the Rescue of Human Lives at Sea (ARSVOM), the specialised technical body within the Ministry of Transport. Prosecutors accuse them of buying four ships worth 85 million lei from a company that in turn bought them through a few small, lowly firms with a few employees.
They are Daniel Manole (general director of ARSVOM), Petru Ogrinji (manager of SC Suszi SRL, which delivered the ships to the Ministry of Transport), Cristian Antohi (manager of SC Tehnorex International SRL, one of the firms accused of money laundering), Valeriu Iorga (manager of SC Blue Line SRL, another firm accused of money laundering) and Ion Macovei (SC Concif Baza de Aprovizionare SRL, a third company, itself an intermediary in the transactions).
For his contribution, Daniel Manole would have been rewarded with about 3% (about 2,000,000 lei) of the amounts paid by A.R.S.V.O.M. to the company that delivered the ships, investigators say.
Five defendants were placed under house arrest by Constanta court judges and subsequently sentenced.
One of the transcripts of the case, published exclusively at the time by Info Sud-Est, captures a meeting in the office of Ion Macovei, the manager of one of the apartment firms that brokered the ship deals, attended by a former Foreign Intelligence Service general, Dumitru Ciobanu, whom Macovei asked to find a way to persuade Minister Cătălin Drulă to favour a Turkish company in a tender.
Other intercepted conversations between Ion Macovei and Daniel Manole, the head of ARSVOM, show that they were preparing the purchase of two or three more ships, following the same pattern as the one investigated by the Constanța DNA prosecutors.
In the discussions, Macovei complains to Manole that USR members are “bastards” and that whoever put them in the government “is crazy” because “you’d rather work with the PSD guys”, then there is talk of a future “shadow support” for transactions in the Transport Ministry. Macovei was irritated that the Board of Directors of the Ministry of Transport was changed and that Minister Drulă does not want to appoint proposals before third parties.
Another transcript shows that Bogdan Stan, former head of ANAF in the PSD government and advisor to the Court of Accounts, asked the head of the Court of Accounts in Constanța, Ioan Bobe, to temper an audit of the company from which ARSVOM allegedly bought two overpriced ships.
The inspection was being carried out by two employees of the Court of Auditors, about whom a businessman involved in the transaction said, “We can’t let two little girls do what they want.” Bogdan Stan was a key aide to Liviu Dragnea during the PSD government when he was de facto head of Romania’s government.
Also in this DNA file, PNL MP George Stângă and Prahova County Council President Iulian Dumitrescu were recorded by prosecutors in Constanța in the office of the former USR Transport Minister while they were asking him to save the jobs of ARSVOM and the Lower Danube River Administration in office.
“Dumitrescu Iulian: I’ll come to you with ARSVOM, yes? With the director, I’ll come with him, yes?
Drulă Cătălin: Ok.
Dumitrescu Iulian: Are you coming too?
Stângă George-Cătălin: With great pleasure, I’m here anyway.
Dumitrescu Iulian: He’s a sort of patron in the naval area.
(…)
Stângă George-Cătălin – Minister, I’ll do what you want! Help me with this guy only 4 months. Keep him on board for four months and after that I promise I won’t come back to bother you with it. You do what you want.
Drulă Cătălin – Do you mean APDM and AFDJ?
Stângă George-Cătălin – Yes.
Drulă Cătălin – Well, I told you that the solution for me is to extend their mandates, yes it’s not four months, it’s two months extension…
(…)”, excerpts from the transcripts show.
- 2022. Allegations of bribery for unlocking containers of protective masks in China
Another recent corruption scandal at the Port of Constanța dates back to December 2022, when anti-corruption prosecutors indicted two inspectors from the Directorate General of Public Finance in Galați, within the Constanța South Customs Border Office, on charges of bribery and intellectual forgery. No sentence has yet been passed in the case.
Prosecutors allege that in 2021, inspector Daniel Cojocaru demanded $17,000 from two businessmen and allegedly received 38,000 lei for performing “acts contrary to his duties”.
Specifically, for the money received, Cojocaru would have taken steps to unblock from the customs of the Port of Constanta – Agigea, two containers with protective masks, non-compliant, imported from China, by the two businessmen.
The other defendant, Dorel Emanuel Petcu, allegedly falsified two customs declarations in which he recorded that he had carried out the physical control of the goods in question, although in reality the physical control was carried out by customs inspector Cojocaru.
- 2022. Prescribed overvaluation, but compensation of almost €2 million
In April 2022, DNA prosecutors indicted the appraiser Mihail Dunăreanu, who was part of a National Authority for Property Restitution (ANRP) case for the valuation of land in the Port of Constanța, according to local publication ZIUA de Constanța.
Prosecutors claim in the 2022 press release that Dunăreanu would have established a land value of 15,668,460 lei, 162% higher than the legally estimated market value, causing the state budget a damage in the amount of 9,714,022 lei.
The appraiser allegedly used a valuation method not recognised by International Valuation Standards, inadequate comparable information and unsubstantiated calculation values, failed to analyse the land in terms of its physical and technical characteristics, best use and specific market, and failed to use valuation methods specific to the sales comparison approach, although sufficient market information was available.
The Ministry of Finance filed a civil action in the case, but in April 2023 the judges discontinued the criminal proceedings due to the statute of limitations on criminal liability. However, the court ordered him to pay to the Romanian State through the Ministry of Finance the sum of 9,714,022 lei as compensation for the damage caused.
- 2016. Forces deployed for customs officers taking cigarette bribes
After raids and searches involving a major deployment of forces, DNA Constanța has indicted 15 customs officers and police officers who allegedly took cigarette bribes from the captains of foreign ships that docked in the ports of Constanța and Constanța Sud-Agigea.
Anti-corruption prosecutors, together with the Gendarmerie and DGA, raided 16 locations, four of which were the Constanța Zonal Captaincy, the Coast Guard, Customs and the Constanța Border Medical Office and International Vaccines, and the rest the homes of customs officers and border police.
After almost 3 years of trials, the Constanta Court of Appeal sentenced 8 defendants to 2 years suspended prison, 4 other defendants were acquitted and 3 defendants received a warning.
- 2012. The “organised criminal group” case in the Port of Constanta, with all 39 defendants finally acquitted after 7 years of trials
One of DNA’s most high-profile raids in the Port of Constanta concerned the import-export activities of the Constanta Regional Customs Directorate, which prosecutors allege involved charging money for the customs processing of goods, whether they were brought in legally or illegally.
The defendants included Mircea Banias, former head of the Port of Constanța and PDL senator (later moved to PNL, PC and ALDE), Laurențiu Mironescu, also former head of the port and secretary general in the Ministry of Interior, Eugen Bogatu, director in the port, Liviu Adrian Durbac, head of customs officials in the Port of Constanța South and his deputies, several foreign nationals, businessmen, customs officers and policemen.
Among other things, prosecutors claim that “in the import operations of clients in the Port of Constanța, the documents of origin of the goods were falsified, imposing a fictitious company as a fictitious importer, they reported to customs commissioners and customs officers situations that were not in accordance with the law, in order to allow the bribe to be established, according to the unwritten mercurials of the group, they negotiated the bribe and finally paid it, sometimes through the customs commissioner, and sometimes directly to the customs worker,” reads the DNA communiqué at the time of the indictment.
Among the charges brought by prosecutors against the defendants were the setting up of an organised criminal group, taking and giving bribes, influence peddling, abuse of office and forgery of documents. After 7 years of trials, all were acquitted because “the crime does not exist, the crime is not provided for by criminal law, or there is no evidence that a person committed the crime”.
- 2011. Former harbour master, one acquittal and one sentence of execution
Eugen Bogatu, director of the Port of Constanta’s Port Domains Directorate, was sentenced in 2015 to two years and six months in prison for aiding and abetting a criminal and influence peddling in a case involving illegal VAT returns. He had helped businessman Said Baaklini load four used engines onto a ship bound for Guinea. The value declared in the papers was overstated at €250 million. So Baaklini claimed illegal VAT refunds worth €60 million.
In February 2011, Eugen Bogatu was remanded in custody. Three other defendants were also remanded in custody. Prosecutors say that SC UCM Reșița SA issued an invoice showing that it had sold four engines to SC Libarom Agri SRL for a total of €250 million plus VAT.
The invoice was issued on the basis of a contract containing fictitious obligations for the two contractors, the Anticorruption Office says. The engines in question were in an advanced state of disrepair, were non-functional, and were made up of used parts, dismantled from other installations, say prosecutors, who speak of a VAT refund of €60 million:
“In these circumstances, a technical-scientific finding administered in the case showed that the real value of the goods in question was approximately €214,000, i.e. about 50 times less than that recorded on the invoice. On the basis of this overvalued invoice, during September 2010, SC Libarom Agri SRL, represented by Said Baaklini, requested the refund from the state budget of the value added tax (VAT) related to this transaction, i.e. the amount of 253,749,507 lei, equivalent to 60 million euros,” the press release states.
DNA prosecutors say that Bogatu demanded directly from the defendant Said Baaklini the sum of 20 billion lei, “for the port operator SC Umex SA in Constanța, by virtue of the contractual relations that this company had established with SC Libarom Agri SRL. The contractual relations were indeed mediated by the defendant Bogatu Eugen, who was also to receive an unspecified commission for this.”
The Bucharest Court of Appeal sentenced the other three defendants to between 4.6 and 5 years’ imprisonment. Eugen Bogatu was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months imprisonment with full enforcement. Bogatu was to be tried again in a murder case in the Port of Constanta, along with 38 other defendants, and finally acquitted in 2019.
- 2004. The Fleet case, where “crimes don’t exist”
Perhaps the best-known anti-corruption case in the Port of Constanța is the “Flota” case, when 80 defendants, including Traian Băsescu, were put on trial in August 2004 by the former National Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (PNA), now DNA.
At the review in early 2008, former chief Daniel Morar (now a judge at the Constitutional Court) announced that “Flota” had been closed since 2007, without this being made public, on the grounds that “the crimes do not exist”.
Prosecutors accused the defendants of damaging the Romanian state to the tune of more than 11,000 billion lei as a result of the sale of 16 ships belonging to the Romanian maritime fleet. Details of the DNA charges in the “Fleet” case here.
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