Convicted Romanian businessman and stock market investor turns fugitive

Romanian businessman Catalin Chelu, who was recently convicted to 6 years in jail for bribing a state secretary, did not turn himself into police custody and could not be found by policemen who were assigned to arrest him. He is now a wanted fugitive, according to police officials quoted by Bursa newspaper. In Galati, where Chelu is from, there are rumors that he left the country about three months ago and that he fled either to a country that has no extradition treaty with Romania, such as Jordan, or to Moldova’s capital Chisinau, where he owns a property, according to local newspaper Viata Libera. Chelu was caught in the act while trying to bribe Dan Valentin Fatuloiu, a former state secretary in the Internal Affairs Ministry, back in December 2010. He had promised EUR 1 million to Fatuloiu to help him with some criminal cases in which he was investigated at the time. Fatuloiu denounced Chelu and cooperated with the police in setting up the flagrant. Some ten years ago, Catalin Chelu was one of the biggest private investors on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB). He started with a cable TV business in the 90s, CCC Blue Telecom, and invested most of his profits in privatization certificates and in shares of the five Romanian investment companies (SIFs). The SIFs were listed on the BVB in 1999 and were trading at that time for less than one eurocent per share, but in seven years their prices grew more than 50 times, bringing Chelu huge profits. He then tried to take over some of the SIFs as he controlled through various firms and middlemen more than 10% of SIF Moldova and SIF Oltenia, although no one could legally hold more than 1% of these companies at that time. Later he was forced by the capital market regulator to sell most of his shares in the SIFs, which he did, and used the money to take control of various smaller listed companies. He targeted profitable companies which had a lot of cash. He would take a control package in each company, change its management and start using the cash for other acquisitions. This way, he ended up holding about 30 companies, some of them listed on the main market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange and most of them listed on the RASDAQ segment. He refused to make public takeover offers for most of these companies, which is mandatory by local law when one investor gets more than 33% in a listed company. In some companies, he used force to take over control, refusing to recognize the rights of other shareholders and blocking them from attending general shareholders' meetings. This brought him a lot of criminal complaints from other investors, which is why he sought to influence state officials to help him with some criminal cases.