Romanian prosecutors indict public railway managers for frauds carried out in 2014-2017

On the verge of the prescription term, Romanian prosecutors of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) indicted 35 defendants, including managers of the Romanian freight railway company CFR Marfa, for frauds related to the illegal sale of 2,450 freight wagons between 2014 and 2017. The damages are estimated at EUR 6 mln, according to G4media.ro.

In this particular case, DIICOT Timiș detained 19 people in May 2017, including the former management of the state-owned company CFR Marfa – represented by the general manager Mihut Constantin Craciun.

Craciun, a former advisor to prime minister Dacian Cioloş, died in March 2021.

The 19 people were all charged with forming an organized criminal group, embezzlement with particularly serious consequences, blackmail, intellectual forgery, and use of forgery.

This is only one of the multiple fraud cases investigated, sluggish and with long delay, about the alleged frauds carried out by the management of CFR Marfa.

In September 2022, the prescription deadline occurred in the trial against former CFR Marfa head manager Mihai Necolaiciuc, who was given more than nine years of jail in a not-final ruling issued in June 2022 for frauds allegedly carried out in 2000-2001, Fanatik.ro reported. The court of appeal informed publicly about this only in March 2023, though.

At that time, in June 2022, the lower court explained that the prescription would occur within less than three months – a deadline no Romanian court can meet for issuing a final ruling.

In 2005, in the midst of an investigation (prosecutors estimated total damages created by Necolaiciuc to CFR Marfa at EUR 50 mln), Mihai Necolaiciuc fled to the United States, where he was arrested in 2009. At the time, he lived in West Palm Beach (Florida), where he owned three apartments in an exclusivist area. In 2011, he was brought to Romania and tried in two cases – for which he was given in 2014 and 2016 12 years of jail, out of which he served 6 years.

(Photo source: Facebook/CFR Marfa)