Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) is investigating the circumstances under which Romania’s railway infrastructure company CFR awarded large contracts to French group Alsom, Economica.net informed quoting unofficial sources.

The investigations were promoted by a car accident on October 13 involving CFR CEO Ion Gavrila, who was driving a car owned by Alstom’s Romanian subsidiary, Alstom Transport.

The prosecutors are investigating how Gabriel Stanciu, Alstom manager for Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria, has used the money spent as “consultancy fees” for getting the contracts in Romania.

The contracts awarded to Alstom are among CFR’s largest and the projects report significant delays, Economica.net commented. Altogether, the contracts CFR has awarded to Alstom exceed EUR 900 million.

Some of the projects, financed from the European Union budget, had to be “phased”, which means they were not completed on time, due to delays in execution, and parts of them had to be financed under 2014-2020 EU budget. Problems related to the public tenders could result in cancellation of the financing agreements by the European Commission.

CFR said it hasn’t received any official notification from the prosecutors about an investigation. Alstom also said that it wasn’t informed about any investigation targeting it and dismissed the information presented by Economica.net as false.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Pixabay.com)