Case closed: Prosecutors decide that infamous Romanian businessman committed suicide

Romania's General Prosecutor’s Office ruled that Hexi Pharma owner Dan Condrea committed suicide, and decided to close the case, two months after the controversial businessman's death. Dan Condrea's company Hexi Pharma has been selling diluted disinfectants to public hospitals in Romania for years, defrauding the state and putting patients lives at risk. The Hexi Pharma scandal broke into the media at the end of April and shook the whole public healthcare system in Romania. On May 22, just as the prosecutors were about to indict him, Condrea smashed his car into a tree on a local road between Buftea and Corbeanca, north of Bucharest. The car crash occurred has raised many questions. While some believed that Dan Condrea’s death was an accident, other said that he committed suicide or was killed by people who wanted him silenced. The prosecutors concluded that the car crash was a suicide mainly because no brake marks were found at the scene. Moreover, the forensic autopsy report established that Dan Condrea’s death “was violent, being produced by injuries that occurred from the collision with hard bodies and plans, but also from car components’ crash due to a collision with an obstacle, and are in a direct and unconditional causal link with the death.” No injuries that may have been produced by another mechanism than the one mentioned in the report were found during the autopsy, according to the prosecutors. The accident was so violent that the driver who smashed the car into the tree that evening couldn’t be immediately identified due to very severe injuries. Those present at the scene assumed it was Dan Condrea as they found his ID documents next to the destroyed car. Condrea’s wife, who was called to the accident site, recognized his clothes. A few days later, the DNA tests confirmed that the man who died in that car accident was indeed Dan Condrea. Dan Condrea became one of the most infamous people in Romania after his company Hexi Pharma started being investigated for selling diluted disinfectants to local hospitals for years, putting the patients’ lives in danger. A team of journalists from local sports newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor brought this scandal the public attention earlier this year. General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar said last week that some 280 Romanian hospitals had filed civil complaints in the lawsuit against Hexi Pharma, the damage in this case amounting to EUR 15.5 million. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com