Romanian court scraps 7-year jail sentence for fugitive real estate tycoon Popoviciu

Romania's Court of Appeal (CAB) scrapped the 7-year jail sentence given in 2017 by the High Court (ICCJ) in the case of fugitive real estate tycoon Gabriel 'Puiu' Popoviciu, currently in the United Kingdom, where he found protection, G4media.ro reported.

CAB also ruled that the case should be re-judged. Both decisions can be appealed within 30 days.

The unexpected decision was based on a small detail that, CAB claims, completely changes the entire picture, according to Gandul.ro: new evidence "not known at the moment when the case was ruled [in 2017]" proved that Popoviciu was not the one who decided on the destination of a bribe (liqueur and whiskey bottles plus promotional materials) given to some anti-corruption officer. The relevance of this detail for the whole case is hard to understand. To put it in perspective, however, the case generates prejudices in the amount of EUR 200 mln, and we are speaking about 224 ha of land in an exquisite part of Bucharest.

The timing of CAB's ruling is key to the extradition request currently being judged in the UK. The latest hearing in the extradition case was reportedly scheduled for May 16 and hasn't reached a conclusion yet, after the UK courts rejected CAB's extradition request in 2021 on the grounds that the defendant was not given the right to a fair trial. However, in May 2022, the CAB was given the right to appeal the extradition refusal.

Popovicu has so far used the services of top extradition lawyers in the UK (such as Edward Fitzgerald QC, who obtained the non-extradition ruling for Julian Assange), plus Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, and former FBI director Louis Freeh.

Popoviciu, among others,