The European Commission found irregularities in the Romanian state’s contracts with several local IT companies, including Asesoft, Siveco, and UTI, following a control in December 2014, said EU Funds Minister Cristian Ghinea.

The EC verified if the public authorities that awarded contracts to companies such as Asesoft and Siveco respected the procurement procedures. The Commission’s inspectors discovered that Asesoft, for example, received preferential treatment as a bidder.

The EC applied a financial correction of 25% to some of these contracts, which means that Romania got less EU funds than it was supposed to for these contracts, due to the irregularities, and had to cover higher amounts from the state budget, according to EurActiv.ro.

Ghinea said that he started investigating why the EU Funds Ministry hasn’t asked these companies, one of which (Asesoft) was controlled by local investor Sebastian Ghita, to pay the financial corrections.

He also suggested that Romania should apply a blacklisting solution. The companies that have caused financial corrections in EU-funded because they haven’t delivered what they had to, shouldn’t be allowed to take part in public tenders for a certain number of years.

Last week, Ghinea asked the prosecutors to investigate the purchase of the software used by the management authority for EU environment funds. He said that the expensive software had been purchased without being tested from a group of local companies, including one controlled by Sebastian Ghita.

Ghita replied that he had no connection to that firm and said he would sue the minister for his statements.

editor@romania-insider.com