Damen wants to terminate the contract with Mangalia Shipyard

The fate of the Mangalia Shipyard will most likely be decided next month, when the contract that the shipyard has with the Dutch group Damen could be terminated.

The General Shareholders' Meeting has been called for November 28, where the matter will be discussed, as Laurentiu Gobeaja, a union leader at the shipyard, told Radio Romania News.

At present, only the repair area is still being worked on at the Mangalia plant, the rest of the sectors are being maintained.

The Dutch group filed for bankruptcy in May after six years of a contract that failed to revive Romania's biggest shipyard.

The Dutch company also has investments at the shipyard in Galati, where financial figures look much better than in Mangalia.

Trade union leader Laurentiu Gobeaja on possible explanations: At Mangalia, the Romanian state has stubbornly insisted on being the majority shareholder in order to control the company, but in fact it has shown us all this time that it has no control. If it had been in control, in all these six years in which there have been major financial losses every year, the Romanian state institutions should have carried out these checks year after year, not now, at the end of the partnership, when they discover certain irregularities in transfer pricing within the group. ANAF, in a tax inspection report, has uncovered at least EUR 55 million in unjustified amounts. We were expecting the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism and the National Anticorruption Directorate to come, to carry out investigations, to clarify these amounts, but they will probably be clarified at the Court of Arbitration in Vienna.

Translated by: Radu Matei