THE MEDIA PRO CASE 14 years later, the reporting of BURSA gets validated

It's only now that the Police has begun investigating the media companies that Adrian Sârbu is involved in, which are suspected of tax evasion and money laundering, fourteen years after the first of the dozens of articles published in BURSA was written (part of a series which went on between 2000 and 2003), which provided evidence of the fiscal maneuvers he had conducted, maneuvers which every government turned a blind eye to, regardless of its political affiliation.

The actions being investigated have occurred after the ones reported by BURSA - according to information in the press, the Police is probing activities that began in 2009, which is the moment when BURSA stopped publishing articles about the companies of Adrian Sârbu, following a court ruling rendered in 2003, by which it was expressly prohibited from mentioning his name: "Florian Goldstein and the BURSA newspaper are prohibited from publishing lies about Adrian Sârbu and the companies of the Media PRO group, because they are defamatory, even though they are true."

That was the wording of the ruling rendered eleven years ago.

Of course, the ruling is aberrant, because there is no one on this Earth that could fathom a notion like "true lies".

Now, however, when companies in which Adrian Sârbu has interests either directly or through proxies, are officially suspected of tax evasion and money laundering (according to the media), we are no longer concerned with trying to find out what "true lies" are - namely, the absurdity of the injustice perpetrated by Lady Justice, a symbol of the barter between the mass-media, as a factor of influencing the public, and the power hungry political regimes, using the force of manipulation as a bargaining chip.

I don't think that this action of the police is a response to the violations of the law, even though it is possible that Sârbu has continued to break the law after I stopped writing about him.

Had the Police really cared about the law being broken, it wouldn't have waited until 2014 to investigate his companies, for offenses committed in 2009.

After all, yesterday's press release by the Police mentions that it had received the support of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI); and the SRI was aware of everything, from the beginning, including at the time when I was writing about the case (I personally have copies of reports which state that Sârbu is an occasional drug user, and that is one of the least significant things included in those reports).

Had the authorities cared about the lawbreaking and the acts of corruption, then president Ion Iliescu would have reacted in 2002, when I handed him in public, in the presence of the members of the Honorary Board of the Romanian Press Club (representing the top mass-media executives), the voluminous "Media-PRO file", containing the evidence of the corruption surrounding the Media-PRO group, the evidence of its misdeeds and high-level complicities.

Had they cared, they wouldn't have limited their research to the period which followed 2009.

Because until 2002, the companies from the Media PRO group did not pay any kind of taxes - no profit taxes, no social security contributions for their employees, no VAT, nothing.

Conversely, they received a state aid of 276 billion lei, for helping "the development of culture".

In other words, they received 276 billion lei to broadcast gypsy music and South-American soap-operas.

In the end, the biggest harm that Sârbu did isn't that he has gotten rich without deserving it, in cahoots with his godfather Mircea Geoană, with the former minister of Finance Decebal Traian Remeş (who became his accountant after turning a blind eye to all the outstanding debts to the state budget that Sârbu had accrued) and with many other ministers, who became a kind of "mini Media Pro cabinet", within the Adrian Năstase Cabinet (and who have in fact caused the downfall of Adrian Năstase); the biggest damage he did was not that he distorted the competition on the mass-media market, pushing the limits of unfair competition beyond any imaginable limits; the worst thing he did wasn't that he has poisoned the journalism profession, by turning his journalists into monkeys, with the sarcastic slogan "Think freely!" and thus paving the way for the "militant journalism" from Antena 3 - mere rudimentary propaganda.

The biggest harm Sârbu has done is legitimizing boorishness, through cheap entertainment, by removing any reverence the underground culture may have had for spiritual values, an outcome for which the state has subsidized him with huge amounts; the biggest harm lies in the degradation of the value of work (remember "Watch and win!"); the biggest harm is the fact that he has altered the decency of this nation that we all belong to.

Nowadays, the explosive obscenity of the Romanian mass-media has become habit, just like the triviality and the lack of culture of politicians has become the norm; being an idiot is a trait shared by politicians of all political affiliations.

Our vulgarity, of the crowd, the development of the herd instinct is the worst outcome of the mass-media policies practiced by Sârbu.

For that, Adrian Sârbu will never go on trial.

The current probes are most likely the result of the notification filed with the Prosecutors' Office by the new management of "Media PRO", which replaced Adrian Sârbu, in an attempt to distance the company from his misdeeds.

So, it has nothing to do with justice.

It's just self-defense.

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Yesterday's events

The Romanian Police yesterday conducted "28 searches at the homes of suspects and offices of companies, of which 20 located in Bucharest and 8 located in the county of Ilfov, in order to gather evidence of tax evasion and money laundering", a press release of the institution states. According to "Evenimentul Zilei", the targeted companies included six companies created or controlled by Adrian Sârbu. According to the quoted source, "these companies are Alerria Management SA (which caused losses of 4.8 million lei to the state budget), Apropo Media SRL (2.6 million lei in losses), Mediafax SA (49.9 million lei in losses), Mediafax Group (5.1 million lei in losses), Compania de Producţie şi Intertainment (6.4 million lei), Publimedia International (20.5 million lei in losses)".

Vicenţiu Gherghe, Prosecutor with the Prosecutors' Office of the Court of Bucharest, said that the investigations conducted yesterday did not target the home of Adrian Sârbu nor the headquarters of Pro TV located in Pache Protopopescu. He went on to say: "40 transactions between various companies and individuals are being investigated, and this action of the law enforcement bodies concerns tax evasions and money laundering". Also, according to the press release of the Romanian Police, the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) provided support to entire action, which involved over 100 policemen.

• Pro TV mentions it is not being investigated in this case

TV station Pro TV said, in a press release, that it is not being investigated in this case, but it admits that the probe is auditing the transactions which companies in the media industry conducted in 2009: "We want to mention that PRO TV SA is not being investigated in this action of the Prosecutors' Office of Bucharest and no search was conducted or is being conducted at its headquarters located in Bd. Pache Protopopescu.

The investigation that the Prosecutors' Office is referring to concerns the transactions which the targeted companies have conducted since 2009".

Also, in the morning, rumors have appeared in the press concerning the involvement of the current management of Pro TV in the investigation of the Police. According to the website Reporter Virtual (www.reportervirtual.ro), which quotes judicial sources, the investigations in question "are being conducted following complaints filed by the new management of Pro TV concerning the financial operations made during the period when Adrian Sârbu was the CEO of CME, the parent company of Pro TV in Romania. According to our information, several documents have been provided to the prosecutors by the current management of Pro TV following the audit of the firm's accounting records".

The founder of Pro TV, Adrian Sârbu, has resigned from the position of CEO of television station CME, last summer. At the end of 2013, a new CEO, Aleksander Cesnavicius was appointed at Pro TV, a moment which was followed by several changes in management.

• Adrian Sârbu, poking fun at the TV channels that debated the case

Adrian Sârbu, the current owner of Mediafax, said, in a statement given to his own press agency, that the information concerning his being investigated for tax evasion and his home being searched was "not true".

The information in question was broadcasted by România TV, B1 TV and other news channels, which he accused of wanting to "to rival the fame of Radio Erevan", (ed. note: a fictitious radio station which was the brunt of many jokes in Romania during the communist regime). "As I was at home at the time the news were broadcasted, I anxiously got myself ready, and prepared coffees, fruit and liquors to meet the people who were in my house, according to the news stations. After looking for them all over the place and failing to find them, I had to accept that this was April 1st and that RTV, B1 and others want to rival the fame that the fictitious Radio Erevan gained during communism", Adrian Sârbu told the news agency.

Orlando Nicoară, the CEO of Mediafax Group, denied that the offices of the company were searched: "There was no search at the offices of Mediafax Group or Mediafax SA, there was no search at the house of Adrian Sârbu, our colleagues from the various TV channels should be more careful when announcing that kind of news, even though it's April 1st", he said in a message posted on his personal Facebook account.