Romanian prosecutors detain eleven people in Nordis case

Eleven people have been detained in the case targeting the controversial real estate developer Nordis, according to a DIICOT press release on Tuesday, February 4. Additionally, two other individuals are under judicial control in this case.

Among those detained - 7 men and 4 women - are Laura Vicol, the former Social Democrat (PSD) head of the Legal Committee in the Chamber of Deputies, and her husband, Vladimir Ciorbă, the main shareholder of Nordis. They are being investigated for offenses including organized crime, embezzlement with particularly severe consequences, money laundering, tax evasion, large-scale fraud, and knowingly misreporting taxes to unlawfully obtain refunds or compensations from the state budget, all committed continuously.

The searches carried out on Monday led to the confiscation of over 50 computers and data storage devices (laptops, tablets, servers, memory sticks, and external hard drives), mobile phones, various sums of money in different currencies, official documents, and luxury goods such as watches, jewelry, and designer handbags.

The 11 detainees will be presented to the Bucharest Court of Appeal for preventive detention requests.

On Monday, February 3, prosecutors conducted 65 searches in Romania and Monaco, including 63 locations in Bucharest and the counties of Ilfov, Constanța, Galați, Giurgiu, Bistrița-Năsăud, and Prahova.

"Investigations so far, involving 72 individuals (40 individuals and 32 companies), reveal that since 2018, three of them initiated and structured a criminal group operating in a pyramid scheme. They developed real estate projects under various companies, collected funds from buyers, embezzled company assets, misled clients through sales contracts, falsified accounting records to evade taxes, and unlawfully obtained VAT refunds or state budget compensations, causing financial damage to companies, customers, and the state," DIICOT previously stated.

The controversial real estate developer Nordis, operating in some of Romania’s prime residential and commercial areas, collected nearly EUR 200 million through a “three-tiered pyramid scheme,” according to prosecutors from the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT).

The scandal broke after a Recorder investigation ahead of the now-canceled presidential elections of November-December 2024, and weighed down on Social Democratic leader and prime minister Marcel Ciolacu, then-candidate for president.