Romania's Tax Agency recovers under 1% of seized amounts

Romania’s Tax Agency ANAF managed to recover less than 1% of the assets and amounts seized in 2014 by local prosecutors as part of criminal investigations, according to a report of the Court of Auditors. The value of the seized assets reached RON 2.85 billion (EUR 632 million) at the end of 2014. However, ANAF recovered only EUR 5.3 million during that period. The Tax Agency has failed to record as debts a part of the punitive damages established by court, according to the Auditor Court. Unrecorded damages run the risk of not being recovered, as the authorities have no debt right. The National Anticorruption Directorate has recently started another investigation to find out why the state had not recovered the damage from the privatization of the Agriculture Research Institute (ICA). Romanian mogul Dan Voiculescu received a ten-year prison sentence in this case, and the state should have recovered EUR 60 million. editor@romania-insider.com