Romanian prosecutors look into IT system used by Agriculture Agency

Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) has started an investigation on how the state awarded the contract for the IT system the Agriculture Payment Agency (APIA) uses for giving subsidies to farmers, reports local Agroinfo.ro. APIA works with an IT system installed by Siveco in consortium with Teamnet. The system was installed only in November last year. The agriculture subsidies have been awarded with great delay. About 100,000 Romanian farmers hadn’t received the advance payments for the subsidy on surface by the end of November last year as their application were not processed in due time. The IT system’s cost was about EUR 1.5 million, without VAT. It is part of a larger agreement of EUR 28 million, without VAT, which APIA signed in 2014 with Siveco and Teamnet for three years. Teamnet International is an IT group founded by Romanian MP and investor Sebastian Ghita, who is now prosecuted for using unauthorized information, bribery, influence peddling, and extortion. Siveco was founded by Irina Socol, recently sentenced to prison for tax evasion. editor@romania-insider.com