From five stars to behind bars: Romania’s richest pay the price for their fortunes

Two of Romania’s top ten richest, Ioan Niculae and Ovidiu Tender, are in jail, after getting final convictions this year. Two others, Dan Adamescu and Gruia Stoica, were sentenced to prison but have appealed against the court’s decisions and are waiting for the final verdicts. The four had cumulated fortunes of some EUR 2.5 billion, according to Forbes Romania rankings. Ovidiu Tender has got the harshest sentence. The Bucharest Court of Appeal convicted him to 12 years and 7 months in jail for defrauding petrochemical company Carom Onesti, in 2003. The court’s decision came just hours before the charges against Tender would have expired. Tender and six others got prison sentences in this case totaling more than 60 years. The court also sentenced them to pay damages worth more than EUR 72 million. Ovidiu Tender had a personal net worth of about EUR 400 million, according to the 2014 Forbes ranking in Romania. He owns Romania’s only geological prospecting company Prospectiuni Bucharest and many other operations in Serbia, Africa, Middle East and even Cuba. He built his fortune by taking over companies that had financial difficulties which he turned profitable and sold to international groups in multi-million dollar transactions. In 2007, he sold Romanian insurance company Ardaf to Czech fund PPF for EUR 35 million, and in 2008 he got EUR 16.8 million from American group Weatherford for oil services company Atlas Gip Ploiesti. Although he tried to build the image of a honest self-made investor, Tender has been involved in many controversies over the years, the biggest of which was the Rafo-Carom case. He and Marian Iancu, another businessman from Timisoara, were accused of illegally acquiring and defrauding the Rafo Onesti refinery and Carom petrochemical plant. Marian Iancu was also got two prison sentences for defrauding Rafo and Carom. Tender’s name also appeared in an international investigation related to a USD 200 million money laundering operation which also involved a NATO official, in 2003. The Romanian media also wrote about his cooperation with the former communist secret service “Securitate”. Ioan Niculae, Romania’s richest, is also currently serving time. He got a 2.5-year jail sentence for having illegally financed Mircea Geoana’s presidential campaign in 2009. Romania’s richest convicted to two years and a half in jail Dan Asamescu was sentenced to four years in jail for bribing several Romanian judges to get favorable verdicts in court. The decision is not final. Romanian court slaps 22-year sentence on corrupt judge, businessman gets 4 years