Claudiu Crețu, the general director of ELCEN, and Cristian Zamfiroi, the commercial director of the company, allegedly worked together to develop a scheme through which they received a certain percentage of public funds paid by Electrocentrale București under contracts for work at thermal power plants in Bucharest, Romanian publication digi24.ro reported.
Sources close to the investigation explained how the scheme was implemented, how ELCEN directors received bribes and how the businessmen involved in the case corrupted them.
According to these sources, Zamfiroi was an intermediary between the businessmen involved in the case and it was he who, according to judicial sources, handed over a bribe of 40,000 Romanian lei (153,000 Moldovan lei) to ELCEN director Claudiu Cretu.
According to the case materials documented by the prosecutor’s office, in July Andrei Cristian Zamfiroi allegedly personally visited the office of Valeriu Slivinschi (a Moldovan citizen, one of the businessmen involved in the case), where he received 40,000 lei in cash for ELCEN director Claudiu Cretu.
Valeriu Slivinschi, together with his brothers, controls a group of companies that signed contracts with ELCEN and Termoenergetica. The said group of companies allegedly cooperated with Russian companies in the past and entered the Romanian market to obtain contracts in the country’s energy infrastructure.
According to judicial sources, the Slivinschi family companies won several state tenders thanks to their friendship with ELCEN/Termoenergetica directors. The contracts in question were contracts worth millions of euros for work on Bucharest power plants.
Judicial sources claim that the TEP (Turbo Energy Power) group of companies developed specifications and documents required for ELCEN tenders (although this should be done by the client, in this case ELCEN) and overestimated the cost of the tender works.
The inflated invoices were subsequently paid by ELCEN, but there were internal documents confirming the actual cost of the work. The difference between the price of the inflated and actual works then went to Crețu or Zamfiroi in the form of bribes (in cash or under fictitious contracts between the companies), according to judicial sources. The cost of the works could be fictitiously inflated by up to 30%.
“The poverty prevailing at ELCEN…”
Judicial sources also explained that Zamfiroi probably negotiated with Sliwinski on how to sabotage the rival company – cutting off its electricity or infecting its computers with viruses so that the company would not be able to participate in the online auction organized by ELCEN and the winner would be a company from the TEP group.
The position of ELCEN’s directors, Zamfiroi and Kretzu, has repeatedly irritated the Slivinsky brothers. Sources in the judiciary also explained to Digi24.ro that there are intercepts of conversations in which they insult ELCEN directors.
“ELCEN is beggarly and this one (swearing) came in a Rolls-Royce (…) That’s why Romania is in such shit, they still put on the mask to… to sell an image, an impression (…) Old men, communists, (swear). He comes to everything ready to go and still sets conditions! (…) I told him: if you hadn’t given me hope (swear word), we would have acted differently! We would have come up with other approaches, other options,” is the conversation between the Slivinsky brothers after the meeting with the directors of ELCEN, according to court sources.
At the same time, sources close to the investigation also explained that there were complaints inside the company that Slivinsky was unable to find common ground with the ELCEN directors from the very beginning and that they found it difficult to resort to various tax tricks to hide criminal activities.
A bribe of tens of thousands of lei in cash in one case. Hundreds of thousands of euros for a land plot in another case
Returning to the RON 40,000 bribe, it should be noted that, according to sources in the law enforcement bodies, the money withdrawn in cash from the ATM by employees of the group of companies was allegedly given to Valeriu Slivinschi to pay several invoices by ELCEN to companies in the TEP group.
After Andrei Zamfiroi took 40,000 lei in cash from Slivinschi, he met Claudiu Crețu in a company car and handed him an envelope with the money, sources close to the investigation said.
On the same day, Cretu went to Breila and handed the 40,000 lei to his father to buy an apartment.
There are other cases when Cristian Zamfiroi allegedly negotiated bribes with representatives of other companies. For example, as sources in the judiciary explained, recordings of Zamfiroi’s conversation from his office with a representative of a company that was about to conclude a contract with ELCEN were intercepted.
Sources close to the investigation claim that Zamfiroi collected “commissions” on his own behalf, amounts he indicated in a note during the negotiations.
According to the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) in an official press release, Claudio Crețu, with the help of Andrei Zamfiroi, also demanded €1.5 million from a company representative “in connection with the purchase and sale of a plot of land belonging to the commercial company concerned”. The land in question is a 31,000 square meter plot of land located in sector 3 of Bucharest, near CET SUD.
Claudiu Crețu and Cristian Zamfiroi are under judicial control.
