Romania’s anticorruption prosecutors ordered yesterday the start of criminal proceedings and the judicial control for 60 days against five defendants, including Romanian investor Dinu Pescariu, who owns Pescariu Sports and Spa, one of the spa resorts largest in Romania, Claudiu Florica, a former general manager of Fujitsu Siemens Computers Romania, and Catalin Tatomir, a former general manager of Microsoft Romania, in a case related to overpriced software license acquisitions made by the Communications Ministry.

The other defendants include Ion Adrian Stanescu and Andrei Savulescu, both former directors in the Communications Ministry, who have been charged with abuse of office. Meanwhile, Pescariu and Florica are being prosecuted for incitement to abuse of office, and Tatomir has been charged with complicity to abuse of office.

Prosecutors have also asked for the approval of the Romanian President to start the prosecution against Gabriel Sandu, former communications minister, for abuse of office. Gabriel Sandu, former Piatra Neamt mayor Gheorghe Stefan, and local businessman Dorin Cocos, were sentenced to jail last year in a related case.

The case is related to the Communications Ministry’s decision to award a contract for the use of Microsoft IT licenses, in 2009. The defendants Dinu Pescariu and Claudiu Florica, as representatives of the company D.Con-Net AG, contacted the minister to help the respective company win the public tender. In exchange for the help, the gave the minister almost EUR 2.2 million, according to prosecutors.

The minister and the other two former directors made sure that the tender specifications would only make it possible for D.Con-Net AG to win the tender. Catalin Tatomir, who was Microsoft Romania GM at that time, also helped the consortium led by D.Con-Net AG by refusing to work with any other potential bidder interested in supplying the Microsoft licenses to the state.

In the end, the Communications Ministry paid over EUR 90 million to D.Con-Net for the IT licenses, but the company only paid EUR 38.8 million to the license supplier. The state thus took a EUR 51 million damage from this contract, according to DNA.

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editor@romania-insider.com