VÎNTU AND LUCA Playing "pass the potato" with a pile of money

Vîntu and Luca were arrested for playing "pass the potato" with money, although the amounts involved were definitely something - the 328 million Euros which Petromservice got following the contract to sell the oil operations and the transfer of the 10,000 employees to Petrom, concluded in 2007 and completed in 2008.

Here"s what we can infer from what the prosecutors are saying:

It all started like this: "We have some money, what do we do now?"

In other words: in reality the money is ours, but it appears on the books of Petromservice, which has other shareholders as well (in fact, we can"t rule out the fact that the other shareholders are mere strawmen) - how do we go about making sure that the money enters our pockets?

What followed was a very popular, and not at all sophisticated game, because Vîntu had already played it with the FNI: we buy some cheap shares for a pittance and then sell them a hundred times dearer to Petromservice, like we did with the shares of Exportimport, between 1997-2000, when we bought them for 2 bani and sold them for about 200 lei to the FNI (well, figuratively speaking, but it"s easy to catch the drift).

Vîntu and his buddies were on both sides of the transactions: they sold and bought the shares to each other - such a nice maneuver - and in the end the huge difference ended up in their pockets.

Honest money.

Once again, we don"t actually rule out the possibility that it was indeed their money - of Vîntu and friends - and that they had not in fact prejudiced the other shareholders, because another experience of Vîntu, that of Romextera Bank, showed that he was capable of signing thousands of notarized powers of attorney, allowing the employees to officially appear as shareholders of the bank, but the shares would in fact be his.

Just like the money which was used to capitalize the Romanian Discount Bank, was owned by Vîntu, even though it appeared under the name of Nicolae (Viorel) Popa.

If this is what happened in the case of Petromservice (which is only a hypothesis which we make due to being familiar with the "SOV operating style", but we have no other proof), then, in theory, Vîntu and Luca might have a chance of benefiting from extenuating circumstances, against the accusations of prejudicing the other shareholders, but not when it comes to money laundering.

But in our opinion, the time of "extenuating circumstances" for Vîntu is history; the persistence in calling him to bring him before the Prosecutors, the frequent arrests (yesterday he was humiliated by being made to think he was released, and just as he was driving away, he was recalled and taken back to his cell), as well as the wide range of charges brought against him, suggest that the authorities are looking to finish him, extenuating circumstances be damned.

It"s not like he didn"t deserve it.

But..."what about the rule of the law"?

I mean, they left him alone for ten years after he causing two hundred thousands of investors in the FNI to lose their money, and now all of a sudden he gets arrested on three distinct charges?

Talk about doing a good job all of a sudden!

• A first for Luca, nothing new for Vîntu

The court of Bucharest has decided the preventive arrest of ten defendants investigated for embezzlement and money laundering in the case of bankruptcy of Petrom Service, for a period of 29 days. At the top of the list are Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu and Liviu Luca, followed by Octavian Ţurcan, Gheorghe Şupeală, Sorin Mihai, Mihai Viorel Râmboacă, Răzvan Florin Râmboacă, Zizi Anagnostopol, Daniela Braşoveanu and Ioan Bohâlţeanu.

The trial of the ordinance to arrest the defendants was peppered with tragicomic moments. In the case of Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, the court ruled that the 29 days will be counted starting with the day when he will effectively be taken to the jail of the Police of Bucharest.

This clarification was necessary because sometime around 14:00, the businessman had left the headquarters of the Court of Bucharest, because the ordinance for his arrest had expired. Vîntu even had the time to speak briefly to journalists, saying he was tired of constantly having to explain himself. Normally, after the pronouncement of the decision, Vîntu would need to return to jail. In fact, the Court has remitted a copy of the minutes of the Decision to the Pursuit Department of the Police of Bucharest to enforce the decision of the court, in case the defendant did not return to jail of his own accord. The entire process feels like a Scottish shower, with the lawyers of the defense being flabbergasted at how such things can happen. Things were different for the other nine defendants, who remained in the courtroom until the ruling was rendered, when a somewhat unusual event occurred, as judge Mitu Stegaru asked about Octavian Ţurcan, who was near the box in which the defendants are held. Upon seeing him, the judge said: "Jump back in the box, please!"

The prosecutors have already found a true web of offshore companies and companies through which large amounts of money was transferred, often times for the purpose of making it very hard to keep track of it. In order to recoup the prejudice, the prosecutors have decided to sequester all of the assets of the defendants: 81 properties - plots of land, apartments, restaurants, retail areas, cars, boats, bank accounts, in an unprecedented operation. "The cross-border nature of the operations conducted by the defendants made it extremely difficult to acquire evidence in this case. Therefore, three international rogatory commissions were needed, in countries where the banking secret is protected by numerous formalities, which led to it taking a long time to uncover valid data concerning the participation of the defendants. As such, some of the legal authorities in question replied to the international rogatory commission in July 2011, and the latest relations notified by other legal authorities were sent in at the end of October 2011. The actions of the defendants indicate expertise and a high ability of using methods to complicate their identification and the potential punishment, circumstance which must be corroborated with the data about other offenses committed by the same defendants in a similar manner. The evidence in the case shows that the defendants own numerous companies and bank accounts abroad, and in order to recover the money that was stolen, these assets need to be found, which would be difficult to do if the defendants were not under arrest", according to the memorandum which accompanies the proposal for the preventive arrest of the defendants in the Petrom Service case.

Prosecutors claim that Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu was directly involved in the operations of S.C. Petromservice S.A. and gave direct advice to Luca Liviu on the decisions to make, criticizing him whenever he wasn"t acting according to the agreed plan. (D.N.)