Romanian Tycoon Receives Third Graft Sentence

A Romanian court jailed business tycoon Sorin Ovidiu Vantu for 10 years and six months on Thursday for embezzling funds from the Petromservice oil company employees association during 2005 and 2006.

The funds were embezzled using an off-shore company and used later to take over the major stake in the company. Former union leader Liviu Luca received 10 years and two months in the same case.

Vantu, the former owner of the Realitatea-Caţavencu media company, was deemed the fifth richest man in Romania in 2008 with an estimated net worth of 800 to 850 million euros.

He ran Romania's most notorious Ponzi scheme, the National Investment Fund, FNI, which collapsed in 2000, causing its 130,000 investors a loss of 1.2 million euros and leading to numerous street protests.

In February 2016, Vantu was sentenced to eight years in prison for embezzlement and establishment of a criminal group in the case linked to the collapse of the FNI and told to repay 13 million RON [3 million euros] and 7.5 million US dollars' worth of damages.

He was first sentenced to two years in prison in 2005 for using false documents to gain the majority stake in the Investment and Development Bank, BID, which went bankrupt in 2002. The Bucharest Court of Appeal, however, cancelled the ruling citing the statute of limitations.

In June 2012, he was sentenced to one year in prison after his ex-business partner, IT tycoon Sebastian Ghiță, who is in Serbia awaiting extradition, accused him of blackmail.

Two years later, Vantu received a two-year sentence for complicity in facilitating the escape of an executive director of several of his companies involved in the FNI scheme.

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