In the first three months of 2024 alone, the commune of Cogealac, with less than 5,000 inhabitants, spent €1.1 million exclusively on direct public acquisitions, more than the municipality of Constanta, which has a population 50-60 times larger.
Contracts financed exclusively with money from the local budget were given directly, on a conveyor belt, several on the same day or within a few days, to two companies set up by the same person. Cogealac City Hall thus ranked 20th out of almost 3000 communes in the country that spent money on purchases made without public auctions.
ISE reporters went to Cogealac to see on the ground the projects paid for by the town hall through direct purchases or simplified tenders with a single bidder. Some of them are dusty and padlocked, some look abandoned, and others have barely started. On paper, however, we found phantasmagorical parks worth €1.2 million apiece, and in the election videos an truly SF commune.
The commune’s mayor, Hristu Cati, has been involved in several criminal scandals, from accusations of voter corruption to apologia of crimes or cheating, has been detained or convicted in the first instance, but eventually acquitted. In his wealth declarations he has no land, houses, accounts or companies, but he claims that in 2022 he loaned his wife €150,000, although on paper he only has a monthly salary of not even 6,000 lei.
Mayor Hristu Cati had his phones disconnected for several days in a row and could not be contacted, the Cogealac Town Hall did not respond with a point of view at ISE’s request, and the representative of one of the companies claims that the works are blocked because the city hall has no money.
In 2023 and the first half of 2024, the Constanta county Cogealac Town Hall made direct purchases totaling €2.4 million, and 75% of this amount was directed to two firms established by the same person, Dumitru Duță:
€1 million went to New Construct Black Sea, through 11 contracts in 2023 and 2024;
€420,000 went to Anything Construct through 7 contracts in 2024.
To this money must be added two simplified tenders with a single participant, New Construct Black Sea, totaling €1.7 million.
Relevant information about the direct purchases and the firms subscribing to them
New Construct Black Sea SRL:
- Received four contracts in about 3 hours on March 14, 2024. In total, €400,000 (VAT included), for interior renovations and roof, fence and building repairs;
- Won, in May 2023, a direct procurement for street modernization in Cogealac, 48,000 euros. The contract was won in less than three hours;
- Between June and October 2023, it was awarded six other contracts without competitive tendering, totaling €600,000, for feasibility studies, landscaping and maintenance of green spaces, renovation of interior spaces and thermal rehabilitation;
- It also won two tenders under simplified procedure, where it was the only participant. Both contracts were signed on March 26, 2024 and have a total value of almost €1.7 million, with which the company is expected to develop two parks in the commune.
- The company is currently owned by Tița Pop.
Anything Construct SRL:
- The City concluded seven direct procurements with the company in just three days between March 12-14, 2024. It thus received €400,000 for feasibility studies. Four of the purchases were finalized on the same day;
- It registered in the electronic public procurement system (SEAP) on March 6, less than a week before it was due to receive the direct procurements;
- The SEAP contact details list a website, anythingconstruct.ro, which is not functional, and the domain is listed as free on the RoTLD;
- The last balance sheet submitted, according to ANAF, dates back to 2019, when the company had zero turnover, as it also did in 2018 and 2017. The ANAF site has no balance sheet of the firm more recent than 5 years ago.
- The company is currently owned by Mihai Cosmin Șerb.
On the pojects’ tail in Cogealac: The “plantation” of Doric-style columns, the forgotten museum and the ghost building
Forty-five kilometers from Constanța, on the E87 national road leading to Tulcea, turn left towards the locality of Cogealac, which has four villages besides. And a ‘forest’ of wind turbines winding to the right as you turn right towards Cogealac. It’s one of the most important wind farms in the country.
However, the locality seems rather shabby, impoverished and with a population without prospects. The community of overwhelmingly Aromanian (Old Romanians) community fell below 5000 inhabitants after 2011 and has lost 10% of its population in the last decade, according to the 2021 census.
Among the projects obtained by the two firms that have gorged on the town hall’s money, the ones that can be traced on the ground are parks to be landscaped next to the church and the town hall, a village museum to be rehabilitated, a sports hall to be repaired and a building to be thermally insulated.
In the church and near the town hall there are no parks laid out or in the process of being laid out, no building materials or crews of workers, although we went out on a working day, avoiding the heatwave. The contracts for the parks were signed on March 26, and four months after that, the sites were not even leveled. But several iron skeletons were rising from them, looking like some kind of pillars in the making.
.
According to the procurement contract, the park at the town hall (just over 8000 square meters) costs €1.2 million and is to have a stage, bleachers for spectators, a children’s playground with shock-proof flooring, a gazebo, walkways, toilets, cubic stone, green spaces (2000 square meters), mosaic natural stone tiles, 40 litter bins, 70 benches and 60 columns in the “Doric” style.
The park should be ready 9 months after the start of construction work.
The second park, the one by the church (almost 2000 square meters), costs €400,000 and is to include the following, according to the SEAP announcement: a playground, green spaces, walkways, public lighting, a string of decorative poles “to highlight the proposed routes in the park”, 27 “concrete chairs”, 42 benches of one model and 24 benches of another model, 35 litter bins, 26 planters, 14 “Doric” style columns and 4 square columns, wooden pergolas. The park should be completed 9 months after the contract is signed.
Next to the town hall park, on the corner of a former merchant’s house from the beginning of the 20th century, in a small room on the ground floor, there is the village “museum”, with 30-40 pieces of the community’s past costumes and daily life. Approximations are made through the window, as the museum is not open, it seems as if it hasn’t been open for a long time, from the dust on the glass that separates us from inside.
We don’t know how the museum should be rehabilitated because it is a direct purchase, much less transparent, with much less leverage to track how and on what the city should spend the money. All we know is that there should be repair and renovation work on the floors and plastering. The value of the purchase is 70,000 euro and we do not know when it should be finished.
The village sports hall is another objective to be repaired through a direct procurement project, awarded on the same day as the village museum and two other projects. The repair of the sports hall costs 171,000 euro.
Another direct purchase involves the thermal rehabilitation of “the building at 108 Rue Mare”. We don’t know what the rehabilitation work entails and there are no details in SEAP about which building it is. The refurbishment will cost 210,000 euros, but it is not clear what the work entails or which building will be thermally renovated.
The only building identified by ISE reporters in the field, according to the SEAP address and the information from the cadastre, is a ruin that would first have to be sanitized and renovated from the ground up in order to be thermally rehabilitated.
The mayor with his phones turned off and the man allegedly responsible for both companies
The mayor of Cogealac commune, Hristu Cati, could not be contacted by ISE reporters several days in a row on any of the three numbers because his phones were turned off.
The Cogealac Town Hall also failed to respond to ISE’s questions about how public money is being spent and channelled to third parties or about the state of works.
We called Anything Construct on the phone number listed on the public procurement platform.
We were answered by a lady who introduced herself as ‘Marina’ and said she was an employee of the company. We asked her how the company had gotten the purchases on the conveyor belt. She replied that she knew “absolutely nothing about that part”, but that she could give us the phone number of the person who could tell us: Mihai Ciceu.
Mihai Ciceu and the phone number that the Anything Construct employee gave us appear on the New Construct Black Sea company’s contact on the public procurement platform.
We called Mihai Ciceu.
First of all, we asked him what he had to do with Anything Construct.
He laughed briefly and told us that he doesn’t know why Anything Construct gave us his phone number and that he “has nothing to do” with this company.
We went on to discuss the contracts obtained by New Construct Black Sea from Cogealac City Hall. Main statements:
“Is it our fault that we were the only bidders?”, Ciceu told us about the two simplified tenders they won, where they were the only bidders.
“All the contracts were done on SEAP. Why don’t you call Cogealac Town Hall?”
“I don’t keep in touch with the mayor. I know the mayor, but I don’t… Most of the time his phone is off.”
“We know each other, but I’ve never discussed with Mr. Mayor about… He has other concerns (laughs, ed.)… He has other things. He’s not in charge of procurement, that’s what I mean”.
About the state of the works, he told us that they are at a standstill because the town hall ran out of money:
“They are quite bad with the budget, and even if we contracted them, we didn’t manage to do anything. If the city doesn’t have the budget, they won’t be able to pay us, so we haven’t started. I mean we started, you’ve seen the parks we started, and it stayed like that.”
Rep: But will 60 “doric” poles fit in that space?
“Ask the designer,” the company representative replied.
Rep: So work is now stopped on all projects?
“For now, yes,” he replied, and he doesn’t yet know whether or not he’s going to drop the projects.
The penniless mayor who lent his wife €150,000
In a series of electoral videos published ahead of the June 9 local elections, Hristu Cati (ex-PDL, PNTCCD, now PSD) appears walking around the commune while promising that parks will become the symbol of the locality. The clip also features “future” models of the commune’s main street flanked by Doric columns and wide green spaces.
A controversial local figure, Hristu Cati was also mayor of the commune from 2008-2016, then deputy mayor for one term, after which he returned to the mayor’s office in 2020. In 2024 he was re-elected for a new term with almost 70% of the vote.
He was investigated in several criminal cases, with charges ranging from outrage to voter bribery or fraud, but was eventually acquitted.
He was accused of giving bread and other food to voters convince them to vote for him. He was convicted at first instance and later acquitted.
In another case, he was charged and convicted at first instance of allegedly defrauding dozens of people into taking out bank loans in his name. He was subsequently acquitted.
In another, the oldest case, in 2010, he was detained for public instigation and criminal apologia in a gunfight over wind turbine business.
According to the wealth declarations of the last few years, Hristu Cati’s only income is his salary in the town hall, almost 6,000 lei per month in 2023. However, Cati claims in his 2022 declaration of assets that he lent his wife €150,000. In his 2021 declaration of assets, Cati noted that his wife borrowed another €150,000 from Chirața Tapancea.
Cati’s wife was to repay the €150,000 loan from Tapancea in just 2 years, by 2023, except that the woman’s only income is her salary from the town hall where she works alongside Hristu Cati and from which she earned 1,000 lei per month in 2022, according to the mayor’s wealth declaration.
The Cati’s do not own land, cars, companies, houses, bank deposits, jewelry or any other assets, according to the mayor’s declarations of wealth for at least the last 7 years.
The last declaration of assets, which was due by June 2024, does not appear either on the Cogealac City Hall website or on the National Integrity Agency portal.
This article has been produced in the framework of the project “Under the Magnifying Glass” carried out by Funky Citizens and funded by the European Union (EU). The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Union or the Netherlands Helsinki Committee (NHC). Neither the EU nor the NHC can be held responsible for this article.
Ne bucurăm că ne citești!
Dacă vrei să ne și susții:
