Romania’s tax agency former head accuses foreign ambassador of “pressures” in favor of tax dodger

The former head of Romania’s National Fiscal Administration Agency – ANAF, Gelu Stefan Diaconu, has made several serious allegations on his personal blog. Diaconu, who was dismissed by Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos in February, accused the Government of blocking the tax agency’s reform and serving the interests of large foreign companies. He also claimed that a foreign ambassador went to him while he was president of ANAF and asked him to approve a EUR 20 million VAT payment to a foreign investor who was investigated for tax evasion. “The major fiscal consultancy firms, their clients (mostly foreign companies), and some embassies have made constant pressures on me, either directly or through the press and politicians, to block the changes in the Direction for Major Tax Payers (DGAMC) and any other measure that would positively impact the fight against tax evasion in this area,” Gelu Stefan Diaconu wrote on his blog on Thursday, March 31. “For example, an ambassador who used to be praised by the progressive media came to my office together with a businessman from his country, a known tax evader, and pressured me to order the unblocking of a VAT reimbursement worth some EUR 20 million in a tax-dodging case that we were working on,” Diaconu also alleged. He didn’t say who the ambassador was but mentioned that he was a declared adversary of Romania’s accession to the Schengen area. He added that he immediately informed the legal authorities about this intervention. “For years the embassies, especially those representing EU countries, have intervened to support the large companies’ interests in their relation with the tax agency,” Diaconu also claims. He also accuses the Government of blocking and reversing all the changes he made in the Direction for Major Tax Payers and thus favoring the foreign companies’ interests. He claims that his changes were aimed at increasing the taxes collected on this segment by 10%, or some EUR 2.5 billion. Gelu Stefan Diaconu was dismissed at the middle of February after his name appeared in a corruption case involving two Roma MPs. Diaconu was charged with influence peddling for allegedly issuing a decision that helped the two investigated MPs cover fraudulent activities with European funds. Ciolos appointed Dragos Doros, a former tax director at KPMG, as president of ANAF. Romanian tax agency ANAF collects almost EUR 44 bln