Romanian media owner Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, detained for 24 hours on blackmail charges

Romanian media owner Sorin Ovidiu Vantu (in picture), who controls Realitatea Media group, has been detained for 24 hours after being accused by the Realitatea Media manager Sebastian Ghita of blackmail. According to Ghita, who runs Asesoft, the Realitatea Media management company, Vantu has asked him for EUR 150,000. Otherwise, he threatened to cancel the management contract between Asesoft and Realitatea Media. Sebastian Ghita has also made public a recording of one of his private discussions with Vantu, in which the media owner veiledly threatens Ghita and says he could have been even shot for not complying with his requests. This is not the first time Vantu is arrested. In fall last year, he spent a week in jail, after having been arrested for 29 days. His lawyers managed to set him free after a week. Vantu, together with two others, are investigated for allegedly helping Nicolae Popa, who has been convicted to jail in the Gelsor – FNI bankruptcy case, but who fled the country to Indonesia, escaping imprisonement. The Indonesian authorities will extradit Nicolae Popa, who is expected back to Romania these days, before Easter. Nicolae Popa was convicted to 15 years of prison in 2005 in the Gelsor – FNI bankruptcy case. He currently lives in Indonesia and the Romanian authorities have asked for his extradition. Ioana Maria Vlas, former administrator of SOV Invest, the company which used to manage FNI, was also charged and imprisoned for ten years in the same file. Gelsor was a financial group which used to run transactions with FNI fund units. FNI (Fondul National de Investitii) was a pyramidal (Ponzi) scheme in the late 1990s. The investment fund went bankrupt in 2000, when thousands of people lost their savings deposited in the fund. FNI is a project started out by Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, who never got convicted in direct connection to this case. After the FNI bankruptcy, Vantu went on to invest in the Realitatea – Catavencu media group. editor@romania-insider.com