The rule of the graft

• "Fraud" in Cişmigiu

The latest "scam" is entrusting the security of Cişmigiu and Tineretului parks to a company that only had one employee and 3 lei in revenues in December 2008.

The company in question is "Burs Team SRL" of Bucharest, won a contract worth 2.2 million Euros with the Department for the Administration of Lakes, Parks and Entertainment, which is subordinated to the Mayoralty of Bucharest.

Even though the company had just one employee at the end of 2008, on February 2008 it had 650 employees, according to Daniel Dima, the manager of the company.

Gabriel Iosif, director of the Department for the Management of Lakes and Parks, admitted that the company that won the contract did not meet the requirements to assure the security of the Tineretului and Cişmigiu parks.

Bogdan Oprea, the chairman of security company BGS, said that the people involved in this affair should be arrested, because the contract for the security of the two parks was awarded without an auction:

"What happened was a gross abuse. Everyone is paying for the security of public areas, and yet such contracts are awarded not based on professional merits, but rather on grafts. It is unacceptable that the auction and the signing on the contract happen in just one day, especially as "Burs Team" did not meet all the requirements for fulfilling its obligations.

My company wasn"t asked to submit a tender, just as no other company was asked to participate in negotiations, even though a minimum of five companies should have been asked to participate in the auction. Is it any wonder, in these circumstances that criminality is on the rise?"

The chairman of the "BGS" security company says that only 5% of his company"s turnover comes from public contracts, which have been awarded based on merits, not based on the amount of money paid as graft", who also added: "We have a contract with the mayoralty of District 3 of Bucharest for providing security for parks, and we have everything that is needed to ensure high level security. Our rate is 8.5 lei/hour/security agent, far lower than the 11.7 lei/hour/agent rate charged by "Burs"".

Bogdan Oprea also says, that in many Romanian cities, security services are ineffectual: "Right now, in Romania, many security contracts are handled by some unprofessional companies, with only four or five teams, who sometimes take 30-40 minutes before they reach the scene of the crime. In Bucharest, we have over 100 teams, and for smaller towns, we have seven-eight teams."

• The "Sterling" affair: what"s ours, is yours

The "Sterling" affair has raised political controversy and fierce public debates lately. Prime-Minister Boc has accused former Prime-Minister Tăriceanu of having issued as early as 2007 the emergency ordinance that turned the contract for the exploration of the oil and gas deposits into a contract for the concession of those same deposits.

In the oil and gas deposits affair, the British company "Zeta Petroleum" received three concessions from the Tăriceanu government, in 2007 and 2008, after the former became a partner of the "Rompetrol" group, as shown by investigative website vot.ro.

According to the journalists, Bogdan Popescu, administrator of "Rompetrol Well Services", who has also served as administrator of the British company "Zeta Petroleum" since March 2007, helped move forward the deals for the lease of the oil and gas deposits with the Tăriceanu government.

The deal was made through Dorin Marian (head of the Prime-Minister"s cabinet), Bogdan Gabudeanu (former head of the National Agency for Mineral Resources - ANRM) and Petru Buzescu (lawyer of the companies involved in the exploration of the gas deposits in the Black Sea).

Călin Popescu Tariceanu denied any involvement in the scandal of the Black Sea oil leases, and, considering he has been slandered, he has decided to sue Emil Boc and Iulian Iancu for their accusations against him.

• It"s not just celebrities that become criminals

As the number of robberies and armed assaults has increased lately, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Dan Nica, recently announced the increase of the number of policemen and public guardians.

Several shocking events have happened recently.

One of them is the brawl that happened Saturday night at the mall in Drumul Taberei, between the clan of Eugen Preda and the mall"s bodyguards.

At the end of January, over 60 guns were stolen from the military technical unit in Ciorogârla in the county of Ilfov. The Ministry of Defense, Mihai Stănişoară sacked seventeen people as a result. Some of the people laid off because of their negligence which allowed the incident in the Ciorogârla military base to happen, include the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Air Force, general lieutenant Constantin Croitoru. Moreover, seven people were arrested.

The worst thing about the weapons theft of Ciorogârla is that two of the detainees are professional soldiers.

Two weeks after the incident in Ciorogârla, a spectacular robbery happened in Cluj: the commercial bank "Transilvania" in the Mănăştur neighborhood. There were no victims, and the two perpetrators were caught on film by surveillance cameras, as they threatened the cashier and the bank"s guardian. Bank officials claim that the robbers got away with the equivalent in lei of around 70000 Euros.

Another act of violence is the incident in Braşov, which lead to the killing of two people who were lethally shot in broad daylight, in front of an exchange office. A third person was wounded.

Other robberies occurred in a gas station in Sângeorz-Băi, where four men with guns stole sweets, by threatening the female clerk, and in the Mihai Viteazul Technical School of Oradea, two young men in hoods, stole a computer from the deputy director"s office.

Last Tuesday, a man stole 6000 lei from an employee of a gaming hall in Calafat, but he was caught by two policemen, and on the same day, two Israeli students were detained for assaulting a club in Cluj using a Molotov cocktail.

The two Israelis were students at the Medical Faculty in Cluj, and their assault came after the club"s guardians denied them access, as the two Israelis had started a row the previous night in the same club.

It"s easy to draw the conclusions, as the president of BGS suggests: "It is essential to understand that security must be the top priority these days, instead of just an afterthought".