Local media: Romanian businessman wanted for tax evasion allegedly flees to Cuba

Romanian businessman Florian Walter, currently wanted by Romanian judicial authorities in a tax evasion case that damaged the state budget by EUR 4.5 million, allegedly fled the country one day before the prosecutors and police raided his home, according to sources quoted by local news site ph-online.ro. Walter left the country by car and apparently went to Monaco where he withdrew the money he had in a local bank. Then he embarked on a plane to Cuba. The prosecutors and police searched Walter’s home and his firms’ headquarters, on Wednesday, May 6, looking for evidence in a tax evasion case. The prosecutors issued a warrant for the border police to hold Walter if he tried to leave the country. They also held 15 people, including Walter’s accountant, who is also an accounting teacher at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, according to evz.ro. Florian Walter owns Romprest, one of the biggest public sanitation companies in Romania. Romprest came to public attention in June 2008 when it received a EUR 450 million contract for 25 years to pick up the garbage and clean up Bucharest’s District 1. According to Romanian prosecutors, Walter allegedly coordinated an organized crime group that included several ghost companies and at least 23 people. The suspects reportedly signed fictitious contracts with ghost companies they controlled via intermediaries to avoid paying taxes. They would then use intermediaries to get the money out of those companies. The money ended up with Walter, who then placed them in foreign accounts. Florian Walter was initially named Florian Busca, but he changed his name to have a clean resume after he was arrested in Austria, in 1997, for taking Romanian workers abroad without legal forms, according to a profile published by cotidianul.ro. Walter had ties with the former director of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) Virgil Magureanu, with former transport minister Miron Mitrea and other influential people. His connections helped him get public contracts from the Otopeni Airport, municipalities and even from the U.S. Army, as Romprest won a contract in 2007 to clean up the military base at Kogalniceanu, near the Black Sea port of Constanta. editor@romania-insider.com