Baron Sechelariu's Marvelous Journeys And Adventures At Land

Bacau's Mayor Dumitru Sechelariu's final months in office tripled the business of his friend, Dorinel Umbrarescu, who operates through the company Drumuri SRL Bacau. Nonetheless, one of the contracts that The Bacau City Hall awarded to Umbrarescu's company is truly noteworthy. Just one month before the end of his term, while the electoral campaign was in full swing, Dumitru Sechelariu solved yet another mayoral problem: he declared the winner of the tender for the repairing of Letea Street. Importantly, Letea Street is not just any street to Sechelariu, but the street to The Letea Paper Factory, which he bought a few months ago. The winner of the tender is none other than Dorinel Umbrarescu, the associate with whom Sechelariu bought the factory! Coincidentally or not, Sechelariu found the public money to repair the street only after he had bought the factory, although he had been mayor of Bacau for eight years by that time. Umbrarescu's businesses have been growing like Jack's magic beans over the past few years. His limited liability company registered in Podul Turcului, Spedition UMB, is by far the leader of the roads segment of the construction market, with contracts worth some 100 million EUR. Last year alone, Spedition posted a turnover of some 69 million EUR, of which 85% came from The State. The many contracts he won from The National Road Administration (led by Dumitru Sechelariu's brother, Sergiu, a secretary of State with The Ministry of Transportation until last Friday) made Dorinel Umbrarescu famous countrywide. But Umbrarescu's prosperity was Dumitru's job, not Sergiu's. Drumuri SRL, a company controlled by Umbrarescu, has won nine Bacau City public contracts worth 3.6 million EUR over the past two months, which is more than the company used to make in two years. And it won the contracts at an amazing rate, too: March 24th - two contracts for street repairs worth 24.1 billion ROL; three days later - a 20.9 billion ROL contract and another three days later - two contracts worth 27.7 billion ROL. Then nothing for two months.

In May, however, Drumuri SRL is back in the game: four contracts worth 74.7 billion ROL: three from The Bacau City Hall and one from The Bacau County Council. One of these four contracts concerns Letea Street - a 13 billion ROL trinket...