Financial Press Review, 25 May

Under the heading ‘”Harbour Constanţa” business, the largest octopus in the Black Sea’, the daily Bursa wrote that ‘this business that would bring to justice more people than the authorities originally expected.’

Among them there were politicians holding important positions in the state, the Curierul Naţional also disclosed in an article entitled ‘1000 to 7000 dollars bribe for each shipment reaching Agigea.’ ‘The state budget has been damaged, in some cases, with amounts ranging between 232,000 and 8.2 million lei for each consignment of smuggled goods, damage resulted from not paying the VAT and the income tax,’ the newspaper noted citing the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (NAD).

Evading the payment obligations to the state budget was achieved through several methods, the main ones being the classification into some misleading headings, corresponding to products for which custom duties were lower than their actual value, and handing some documents (some even falsified by members of the network) in which the merchandise was understated in terms of quantity and value’, we read in the Bursa.

In the Curierul Naţional we read that ‘as for the Senator Mircea Baniaş, the anticorruption prosecutors contended that he has promised the then director of the Port Division, Eugen Bogatu that he would use his influence to block the restructuring of the customs authority (throughout the area of ​​the Constanţa harbour) and a ministerial order which requires the scanning of all containers in the harbour.’

The Ziarul Financiar wrote that ‘the Ministry of Interior scandal led to the dismissal and then to the detention on charges of corruption by the NAD of the second important man of the ministry, General Secretary Laurentiu Mironescu and could also call into question the position of the portfolio holder, Traian Igaş’, the newspaper concluded.

The daily Bursa reported on the views expressed yesterday at a conference attended by several ministers, held on the theme ‘European funding - an opportunity for economic recovery.’

‘The message of the Finance and Agriculture Ministers was very optimistic with ambitious targets towards the European funds (90 percent in 2015), following the implementation of some measures to speed the spending of community funds. So far the companies have not shared this optimism’, the newspaper reported.

The Curierul Naţional particularly noted the views expressed by Agriculture Minister Valeriu Tabără at the conference in an article entitled: ‘Agriculture sits on a gold mountain. How can it get it?’


Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University