The heirs of Romanian billionaire Dinu Patriciu, who passed away in 2014, have to pay over USD 200 million to the Finance Ministry, according to a court decision that is not final.

Ana and Maria Patriciu, the billionaire’s daughters, and his second wife, Dana Rodica Patriciu, must pay this sum proportionally to the share they received from Patriciu’s fortune, local Profit.ro reported.

Dinu Patriciu’s heirs have to pay this sum to cover for the USD 58.5 million the investor recovered from the Libyan government in 2001, after it took over the Rompetrol group from the Romanian state. The money should have gone to the state budget, but Patriciu kept it and with it bought Romania’s biggest oil refinery, Petromidia. This helped him build an international oil group, Rompetrol, which he sold to the state oil company of Kazakhstan, KazMunayGas, in 2007. The transaction turned him into a billionaire.

The Finance Ministry now wants to recover USD 226 million from Patriciu’s heirs, three-quarters of this sum representing penalties and interest on the initial sum.

editor@romania-insider.com