Wednesday, October 2nd 2002: The Muzzling of the Romanian Media
Commercial and political pressures have left Romanian journalism at its lowest ebb since the demise of communism.
RCJI
When journalist Silvia Vranceanu began investigating a tycoon from the ruling Social Democratic Party, PSD, in the north-east town of Focsani, local powerbrokers warned her to stop. Vranceanu, a local correspondent for the national daily paper Evenimentul Zilei, refused to back down and went on to publish a series of hard hitting articles. But she paid a price for her persistence. Soon afterwards, a Bucharest TV station acquired and broadcast a tape of a teenage Vranceanu stripping in front of her boyfriend.
Undeterred, Vranceanu has continued to probe local issues, but her experience is one example of the pressures that have left journalism in Romania at its lowest ebb since the demise of communism.
The media in Romania have certainly proliferated since the fall of Ceausescu in 1989. Today, there are 15 national daily newspapers, hundreds of local titles, over 50 private television stations and more than 100 radio stations.
The early 1990s saw an explosion of investigative reporting, but the concentration of media ownership in the hands of local elites, interference from central government and an increasingly corrupt working environment, have combined to chip away at basic standards of truth and accuracy among journalists in recent years.
Shifts in media ownership, with increasing numbers of publications owned by politicians, businessmen or former security service officers, have played an important part in this decline.
Not that outright ownership is always necessary to establish some degree of editorial control, according to Manuela Proteasa of the financial paper Capital. "Huge amounts of money were transferred from state companies to private media companies, through advertising contracts or even offshore bank accounts," she said. "Control can also be exercised through the provision of subsidies, direct or indirect shareholding and tax. Large TV companies depend on official goodwill to endlessly reschedule their tax liabilities, instead of ever paying up."
The only independent, locally-owned network is the North East group which currently comprises four newspapers in the towns of Iasi, Roman, Bacau and Focsani. The newspapers are owned by the journalists who established them - and in 1998 the group numbered 18 titles.
Despite problems in distribution, intimidation of advertisers and accreditation problems for the journalists, the founder of the group Andi Lazescu hopes to extend the group again, as a way of expanding the independent media.
Otherwise, newspapers which exercise the greatest editorial independence tend to be those have some level of foreign ownership. These include the national daily Libertea, owned by Swiss media company Ringier, Evenimentul Zilei, which is 51 per cent owned by the German Bertelsmann company, and Romania Libera, also partly German owned.
Timisoara, in western Romania, had a particularly effective local press during the 1990s. Local journalists uncovered an oil smuggling racket run by customs and secret service officers during the war in former Yugoslavia, and conducted other investigations into the local authorities and security services which seem remarkable now.
"Back then, we were able to uncover and publish that kind of thing, because the links between newspaper owners, the local authorities, security services and organised crime were nothing like they are now," said a local journalist who did not want to be named.
Today, the local branch of the PSD owns one of the Timosoara newspapers and attempts to exert indirect control over journalists working for the other local papers, according to Mircea Opris, a local correspondent for Romania Libera.
"I know a number of journalists here who are manipulated,” he said “ They are forced to write articles - mainly on political and economic issues - which are then used to extort or blackmail businesses or the opposition parties. The directors and owners of the publications quietly bank the pay off, while continuing to pay their reporters a pittance."
The use of newspaper reports as a form of blackmail is increasing. Although the articles are essentially intended to extract bribes, some do get published. At the end of the summer, several national titles ran "investigations" into multinational companies. Flimsy stories were used as an excuse for misleading front-page headlines. Part of an attempt to extort greater advertising revenues from the companies targeted, the articles stopped when the American Chamber of Commerce and the International Advertising Association complained vigorously.
But while some journalists are ordered to write damaging articles, others find themselves more subtly manipulated. "When my boss handed me some interesting files, I followed up the various leads and ended up exposing a gross misuse of public funds,” said an experienced investigative journalist in Craiova, the largest town in southern Romania.
“Only after I left the newspaper did I learn that my article was intended to damage one of his commercial opponents. My boss didn't give a fig about the public money which had been stolen."
When journalists try to expose anything that local powerbrokers don't want uncovered, however, it is quite a different story. The ruling clique in Craiova, a group of former intelligence officers who use their access to secret files on local judges, prosecutors and officials to control the local authorities, do not take kindly to inquiring journalists.
In September 2001, Loredana Chimoiu, Craiova correspondent of the Antena 1 TV station, began investigating police corruption and a war between the town's two main criminal groups. When she received a call about a car accident on the outskirts of the city, she drove to the location, only to be pulled out of her car by an unknown assailant, who then used a knife to cut off part of her hair.
In some areas, information is even collected in advance, so that pressure can be applied as soon as a journalist steps out of line. A report obtained by IWPR from the Transylvanian town of Cluj, listed the names of journalists, their sources, and details about their private lives. The report was compiled by former police secret service officers.
While organised crime and local politics continue to account for much editorial interference, some journalists have found themselves muzzled in the "national interest". Raico Cornea, an experienced journalist who has worked both for public television, newspapers and radio, says that he came under pressure over his coverage of the Kosovo conflict. "They tried to modify reality. They told me to be careful about what kind of article I produced because Romania wants to join NATO," he said.
Indeed, NATO entry fever has become a pretext for all manner of control, said Mircea Toma, president of Freedom of Expression, FREEEX, a Bucharest NGO that monitors press freedom. "Everyone is being told to shut up at the moment, until we get into NATO."
In 1999, Romania's invitation to apply for EU membership prompted much-vaunted media reforms and legislation to improve access to information, but the laws were of little practical use to journalists. On certain occasions, the authorities have refused to apply them, which has not been properly publicised.
Another raft of legislation, including a controversial law covering classified information, have served to limit freedom of information. Moreover, dozens of journalists have faced libel suits based on outdated legislation, which has never been removed from the statute books.
Apparently dissatisfied with existing levels of control over the media, the PSD followed its election victory in 2000 with the creation of a ministry of information. Quickly dubbed the "ministry of disinformation" by the press, it has made various attempts to manipulate news coverage, most recently with a secret document exposed in August by the Bucharest daily Ziua.
Entitled “A Public Communication Strategy for the Romanian Government”, the document advised government officials on how to manipulate public opinion during the quiet summer months. Officials were encouraged to fabricate stories in order to counter the "extreme aggression" of journalists. "Otherwise this empty space might become a platform for challenging the authorities. The ministry's communications team is therefore to function proactively," it read.
More worrying than central government's often clumsy attempts at covert manipulation, are growing signs of personal corruption among individual journalists. "If you look close at any media outlet you will find either political or financial pressure - or both," said Toma.
Financial pressure can take a number of forms, as Toma who is also a reporter on the leading Romanian weekly Catavencu, explained, "A few years ago we had to sack a colleague from our magazine, when we discovered he was receiving regular payments from one particular bank. We found his name on a list along with 20 other journalists from different publications. They were all on the bank's payroll, keeping people there informed of what was going on. "
A recent private survey supplied to IWPR by FREEEX also showed an alarming lack of initiative among journalists. An analysis of the main media outlets in Transylvania revealed that up over 80 per cent of articles published over the period examined were either verbatim transcripts of press conferences, or news agency copy.
Less than 20 per cent of reports showed any original work on the part of the journalist. "I'm worried. I was expecting that the generation who showed up after the fall of communism would be different. But no, they're dinosaurs, they're following the same old paths," said Ioana Avadanei, head of the Romanian Centre for Independent Journalism, ICIJ. "The enthusiasm and the education gained in more than a decade of freedom haven't made a difference yet. It seems that we'll have to wait."
In the meantime, various media-development NGOs are working to improve the training of journalists, which is currently university-based and overly academic. But even training initiatives can attract unwarranted attention. "In 1999, we initiated a programme for journalists interested in cross border investigations, and we funded a few journalists to attend," said Cristina Guseth, director of the Bucharest office of the US NGO Freedom House. "After that, we received phone calls from high ranking officials, warning us to stop one of the investigative projects. I realised then how dangerous things can get."
Indeed, Ioana Avadanei, director of the Centre for Independent Journalism, believes that reporters who "step outside" the Romanian system face discrimination. "Some of our journalists have attended courses or training programmes abroad, where they gained a broader perspective," she said. "They find themselves rejected for jobs they apply for here, and working journalists who win places on such courses are not allowed to go."
But in an increasingly bleak landscape, there is hope. More than 300 journalists have registered themselves with the Romanian Online Editors Association, AEPO, an NGO which has set up a website for stories which could not be published.
"We publish journalists from Bucharest and from all over the country. They come to us out of frustration," said AEPO president Ioan Margarit. The stories are checked by AEPO staff and then published online. “One of our latest scoops was about a minister trying to influence the supreme court over a ruling. The story and the documents verifying it came from a journalist who couldn’t get it published by the newspaper he works for in Bucharest.” Amidst intimidation, corruption and lethargy, it seems a small but determined band of journalists are striving to keep the investigative spirit of the early 1990s alive.
Paul Cristian Radu (paulradu@crji.org), Sorin Ozon (sorinozon@crji.org) and Dan Badea are members of the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Freedom at Midnight-Rescuing Sex Slaves
Friday, January 10th 2003: Freedom at Midnight: Human Trafficking in Romania
Undercover investigation reveals how young girls are being beaten, abused and sold for a few hundred of dollars in Bucharest’s back streets.
Paul Cristian Radu paulradu@crji.org
"Can I be sure you're not giving me back to them?" Diana whispered from the backseat of the car. "I’m scared.”
The trembling figure, huddled in a blanket against a cold Bucharest night, had only minutes earlier been just one of the legion of girls for sale in Romania’s human-trafficking market. Driven by fear, her words tumbled out, “They hit me. He stabbed me with a knife. You want to see the wound? I'm hungry. Do you like me? You want sex with me? Can I have your kids afterwards?
“I'll be a good wife. Do you want to marry me? You know, they starved me. Do you want me to take off my blouse? I need to eat something! Promise I will never be starved ever again? I want to smoke, too. And don't forget to buy me chocolate."
Diana - her name has been changed for the purposes of this story -cost us 400 US dollars. As part of a joint investigation by IWPR and the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism, RCIJ, we had just purchased her from a trafficker. A few days before, she had passed New Years Eve chained and freezing in a dog cage.
Now she was on the way to a shelter for victims of the sex slave trade. She could scarcely believe it - from a life of terror she was headed for a hot meal, warm bed, long bath and some human understanding, plus a chance for a new life.
Plucking Diana so dramatically from one world to another was the culmination of an extended investigation into the crime of forced prostitution and human trafficking in Romania. Driven in many cases by dire financial need, young women, such as Diana, are coerced into nightmare lives - tormented and tortured in Romania and sometimes sold on to indentured lives abroad in countries where they cannot speak the language or find any help. Only the extent of the crime compelled us as journalists to cross the line, rescue one of the victims and, in so doing, provide first hand evidence of the brutal trade.
Diana is also mentally retarded. She can’t read or write and suffers from what is termed the "street kids' syndrome" - not knowing when to stop eating. Before she was handed over to a women’s shelter, she consumed three Big Macs, two chocolate bars, three large sodas and then asked for more. But a few days on from her escape, her wounds - at least on the outside - were healing.
GOING UNDER.
Early last December, as part of a team of journalists, we attached hidden cameras to our bodies and entered the hidden world of the traffickers.
The idea for the project was to investigate the culture of police secrecy and complicity whereby glamorously code-named operations inefficiently targeted the human trafficking business, which seemingly continues to thrive in Romania. Despite tough laws against it, prostitution is booming in Bucharest. Newspapers, internet sites, city nightlife guides and many of the city's 10,000 taxi drivers all point you towards places where you can buy what they call "paid love".
Evenimentul Zilei, a Romanian daily paper, was planning to air a new investigative TV programme on the topic. RCIJ members who had worked for the title had already learned much about human trafficking, and were participating in a broader IWPR regional study into the issue. Information had been gained through law enforcement agencies, published reports and interviews with underworld figures involved in trafficking and with traffickers themselves.
The aim of this joint investigative would be to spark real public debate - and response - by focusing on the individual suffering caused by the crime, from a victim’s point of view. So a plan was devised to go undercover and record the whole story. One journalist would play the role of a foreigner and pretend to buy a girl. The foreigner ruse eased our entry into the world of the pimps, traffickers and middlemen. The foreigner needed a translator and so I took on this identity myself.
To the underworld figures we contacted through the course of the investigation, I was just another guy on the make, trying to get by. Two other two journalists were assigned to follow us unseen. They had the key role of watching over both of us, and monitoring the traffickers' movements.
More practically, we had to worry about our equipment, including hidden cameras, recorders and wires of various kinds, all of which had to pass unnoticed. At the same time, we would have to change videotapes and batteries from time to time, which limited our freedom of movement and sometimes spelled serious trouble.
THE SEARCH.
Our first encounter began with a taxi driver.
"Hi mate,” I offered. “My friend is a foreigner and he'd like to have some fun with girls tonight. Can you help us?"
"Sure, sir. Hop in. I know a girl you will like a lot,” the driver replied. “She's not one of those working the streets. No sir, she's a friend. She lives in a flat close by, near the national football stadium. She chooses her own clients. She's clean and young and she charges 800,000 lei (25 dollars) per hour at most. You can tell your friend that if he doesn't like this girl, we can go see some others."
The taxi driver was not aware that his car was being followed by another member of the RCIJ team, who was supposed to interfere if the situation got ugly.
But the situation didn't get ugly. The taxi driver was happy to take the money for the ride, even though the foreigner said he did not fancy the girl. The driver was only sorry he couldn't reach a friend who had other girls available. The pimp's mobile phone was turned off.
After visiting a few other places where prostitutes were available, we felt we had taken enough footage for the night. But we had nothing new. On videotape, Bucharest was just another illegal version of Amsterdam's famous red-light district. We tried to find cab drivers who would offer underage girls, but they all said this was too tricky.
Over the following days, we had similar experiences with hotel security men from four expensive Bucharest hotels. They all offered prostitutes and a discount price for the hotel room if we took the girls they offered. The girls were either in the hotel lobby or bar or just a telephone call away. The men said it was no problem if we brought in girls they did not know, though we would have to pay the full price for the room.
After a few nights, it was time to move from the streets and the front men to confront the system’s key figures: the traffickers themselves.
THE TRAFFICKERS.
The police car was just in front of us. For a moment, we thought we had been unlucky. We knew the Matasari neighbourhood, near central Bucharest, would be packed on a Friday night with pimps offering their services on street corners. And now the car bearing the number plate of the 8th Bucharest police station was just in front of us.
But to our surprise, the group of pimps on Pache Protopopescu Street did not vanish when officers pulled over, only 15 metres away.
Our curiosity grew, and we stopped the car when we noticed someone get out of the police car and join the pimps' gang. We stopped our vehicle too and the same man - the one who had got out of the police car - asked us if we would like a prostitute.
"Hi man. Would you like to try one for yourself,” he asked. “It's cheap and you'll be satisfied. Don't worry about the police. They're my friends." After briefly repeating the story about my foreign friend seeking some fun, I insisted the police car might get in the way. It had not moved, however, and the cops seemed uninterested in our conversation. At this point, the pimp wanted to deal directly with the foreigner. Tired of my complaints about the police presence, the pimp then called a friend who could speak a little English.
"Police. No problem. Police friends," the woman said, while urging us to follow her to an adjacent street where she and the pimp were minding the girls.
By now the group of pimps started shouting at us, so we had no choice but to let them get into our car and follow their directions. After a short drive through dark, narrow streets, they told us to stop. In front of an old rusty iron gate, we were told to wait.
One by one, the girls started coming to our car. They were shivering from the cold. The expressions on their faces were utterly indifferent, as if they could see through us. From then on, I noticed the same look on all the prostitutes' faces.
We decided to call the show off.
"Look man, you have really nice girls here,” I said. “But we have to go eat and we'll come back later. OK?"
"Sure. I can recommend you a restaurant just around the corner. You can take the girl there, too," the pimp said. He looked disappointed when we turned down the offer.
We took off in a hurry. It was enough for the night. We had decided Matasari was the right place to look for trafficked women, and returned a few days later. The first thing we had to do was avoid the same street corner where the pimps hooked us last time. We decided to head down the back streets and avoid the main boulevards.
Our plan paid off. We noticed a bearded little man smoking in front of what once had been a beautiful house in the "Little Paris" of pre-Second World War Bucharest. Now the house was only a memory of former times and the little man in his thirties, like the owner, probably did not care about architecture or history. We suspected that he was a pimp and trafficker, and made our approach.
THE DWARF.
"Do you have girls?" I asked.
"Yes, I do. Who's asking?" the man replied.
"This might be a little unusual. But I'm here with this foreigner and he is interested in taking a girl home for the holidays. You know Christmas, New Year's Eve. What do you say?" I said.
"So he wants her for a couple of months? Okay. Nice. Call me the ‘Dwarf’. Friends call me this. We could do good business. Come inside. I might have something for you," said the short, bearded fellow, pointing to a narrow corridor.
We followed him into a small, dark room that had no door but only a curtain leading off it. We were told to wait, until the Dwarf re-appeared from another room with a blonde girl in a miniskirt.
"Ask him if he likes her. She has no marks, no plagues. Tell your friend to touch her breasts to see they are firm," he said, slapping her bottom. The blonde did not say a word, though a bitter smile flashed across her face for a moment. I felt the poor girl had been humiliated enough and told Dwarf to go outside to discuss business. He let the girl return to the other room.
In the meantime, a taxi driver, who had parked his company cab in front of the house, came in and followed her. He was there for what Dwarf called a "quickie".
"You know what? Your friend can try her, too. I tell you she's good," Dwarf said, describing what she was capable of doing in graphic terms.
We had heard and seen enough. We told Dwarf we would return with money. But back in the car we found our battery, wires and recorder were not working, so that we had only poor quality images and sound on the mini-DV tape. We would have to go back. This time a third RCIJ member accompanied us, posing as the landlord of the apartment that the foreigner was renting and claiming he also wanted to see the girl.
Dwarf agreed and showed us the girl again.
"Hey, me and my wife have decided something. We are going to give you the girl for good. We're going to sell her to you for 300 US dollars. You pay the money and can do whatever you want with her," he said, looking straight into my eyes.
"Well,” I hesitated. “Let me ask my friend. We could be interested.” I enquired about her age, where she was from and whether she had identity documents.
"What do we do if the police question us about her? How do we take care of her? You need to tell us,” I said. “We're beginners and could learn a lot from you."
Feeling proud that he could teach us something, Dwarf started talking and this time the electronic recording equipment was working properly.
"If anyone questions you about the girl's age, you just say she's 18 and she has no documents because they were stolen. Just feed her, keep her in your apartment and don't let her outside unaccompanied. You'll have no problems. I didn't have any problem so won't have any either," the trafficker insisted.
After a further lecture about handling the girl, we told him we'd go get the money and be back in no time. As Dwarf and his wife approached our car, another RCIJ member - who had not left the car - got into conversation with Dwarf, asking if the girl he wanted to offer us was the one standing next to him.
"No, this is my wife," Dwarf replied coldly. The tension eased when I asked if he wanted payment in Romanian lei or dollars. He said it did not matter.
"Just don't make me wait too long," he said. "I'm not going to offer her to clients for two hours. This means I lose money if you don't come back." We took off and left Matasari. We had no intention of coming back.
It was still December, and we spent the next few days investigating in other parts of Bucharest. We talked to pimps, and almost every one had girls for sale.
A trafficker in the main Bucharest railway station wanted to sell us a girl for 1,000 dollars - indicating the price with broad marks sketched with his foot in the thick snowdrift.
RETURN TO MATASARI.
After the New Year, the logical next step for the investigation was, inescapably, to go through with a “purchase”.
No professional reporter would want to cross legal bounds or provide funds directly to criminals participating in the trade. But to get to the heart of the trafficking story, and provide images that could drive home the enormity of it all, we would have to return to Matasari.
For this purpose, the editor of Evenimentul Zilei handed us the equivalent of 600 dollars. We consented with mixed professional and personal feelings. But we felt the public interest, as well as that of the girl herself, were overriding. The girl, it was agreed, would be immediately released into the care of the NGO Reaching Out, which tends to prostitutes and sex slaves.
The final part of the plan was laid in place when Iana Matei, the director of the organisation, confirmed that she was ready to take in any girl we were able to rescue.
The NGO, which had started work in 1998, had so far taken in 74 victims of trafficking. Each spent about a year in a shelter, attending courses and gaining qualifications. The programme has been a success story, as only five girls have since returned to prostitution. One is now a psychology student at university.
A few days later we found ourselves back in Matasari, Dwarf's turf. This time, though, we hired two bodyguards to protect us.
I knocked on the door but nobody answered. Dwarf was not at home. But we located him not far away, on the street corner together with other pimps and prostitutes.
"Hi Dwarf! How are you? Get in the car!" I told him. With a superior smile on his face, Dwarf hopped in. The rest of the guys stared enviously, as Dwarf was driven away. The foreigner, Dwarf and I sat in the back.
"Hey man I waited for you two weeks ago. You said you'd come and you didn't? What happened? I lost money that night," the trafficker said, with a serious expression.
I cut in, "I apologise, something unexpected. . . . Anyway the past is the past. Let's get back to business. Do you still have the girl?"
"No man, I don't. I sold her,” he said. “And yesterday evening I sold another one. But what is this. Who is the driver? Is he a cop? I can sense he's a cop. What's wrong with you man? I liked you the last time. You came to me by yourself, no problem. But now? What's this?"
Dwarf was nervous. In a sense, he was right. The driver was an ex-policeman in the special action unit who’d left his job for a better salary in the private sector. I assured Dwarf that everything was all right and he had nothing to fear. Finally, he relented.
"It's God's will man. I put myself in your hands. I trust you because you seem all right. But I don't have a girl for sale tonight. Maybe you can come some other time. Just give me your phone number and I'll call you up when I have something," he said.
I insisted that the foreigner had the money on him and wanted to buy a girl that same night. Convinced, Dwarf agreed to take us to a few places where girls might be on sale.
"We'll start first with the place where I sold a girl the other night. Maybe I can get her back,” he said. “ You must come with me alone, without the driver or the foreigner, and you don't say anything. You'll pay me 400 US dollars for the girl and you don't care how much I pay myself for her. Agreed?"
I accepted and we set off. Unfortunately, these traffickers had sold her, too. But they told us who had bought her and we drove to another house, still in the Matasari neighbourhood.
We entered a house and an almost surreal scene presented itself. Dwarf introduced me to Bila, a drug dealer also in the human trafficking business. Bila was lying on a sofa with a needle in his left arm. He was so high he could hardly shake hands. He said he didn't know about the girl we were looking for.
"See man. I don't do drugs. Drugs make you look stupid. Isn't it better to just drink a good vodka and get drunk like hell?" Dwarf asked, nodding his head with disapproval.
The trail had gone dead, so I asked Dwarf if he knew other traffickers who might have girls that night. After a moment of hesitation, he said we'd better go to the main railway station area. We stopped our car very often in this new area and Dwarf, who seemed to know everyone on the street, finally came up with a lead.
"We'll go to Buric,” he announced triumphantly. “He has a girl on sale."
FINDING DIANA.
Minutes later, we met Diana inside Buric's house. She was on sale.
"The competition is so tough lately. They are bringing in beautiful girls from Ukraine and I'm losing my business," Buric's wife complained to Dwarf. She was carrying a baby in her arms. "Nobody wants my girls anymore. They'd rather pay extra and go with those long-legged girls. We're living hard times."
She talked very openly, as Dwarf explained that I was a good friend and that he wanted to buy the girl for himself. "OK, Dwarf, do you want her or not?" the woman asked, pushing Diana forwards into the light. She looked about 16 but the woman insisted she was 19. "She's not sick. The only thing is that she eats too much. She always asks for food," Buric's wife added.
We returned to the car, took some of the money and Dwarf paid the woman for Diana.
The temperature outside was minus five degrees Celsius and the girl was wearing only a thin skirt, high heels and no socks.
"Please give her a jacket or something. It's too cold outside for her," I told the woman who was counting her money after handing the baby to Dwarf.
"We don't have any other clothes for her. Don't you see we are poor? She won't die. She's used to cold," the woman replied without even a glance. Happy with the money she had got, she told us she could sell us some other girls, too.
We held Diana's hand going back to the car because the narrow street was covered with ice and she was stumbling in her high heels. She was confused and kept asking us what we were going to do with her. Dwarf assured her that she was going to be OK and that “her stars had just changed”.
We left the grateful trafficker in front of the railway station after he counted his money on our hidden camera. With the money in his hands he seemed relieved.
"Wow. Good. Good business. I was so afraid I'd be arrested. Give me your phone number and I'll call you when I have another girl on sale," he said. We declined and headed off.
GIMME SHELTER.
In the car, Diana burst into conversation. "Are you sure you're not giving me back to Buric? Who's going to marry me? Buric and his wife beat me, “ she said. “ He cut me with a knife. He kept me in the dog kennel on New Year's Eve. They forced me in there naked and it was so cold. I don't want to return there. Ever. Why did he turn this way? You're driving back to Buric. I'm scared. Please, don't give me back."
Diana continued to voice her fears throughout the one-hour journey to the women’s refuge in Pitesti. She was so confused that she couldn't believe she was on her way to a shelter where she would be taken care of. Sitting in the back seat, she offered the one thing she was forced to surrender continually while in the traffickers’ hands: sex.
She couldn't believe her eyes when we stopped at a petrol station and bought chocolate, sodas and cigarettes. She didn't even smoke but wanted to see if we would buy her everything she asked. I knew she did not smoke when she asked me to buy a cigarette brand that had vanished a long time ago. She ate the chocolate in seconds and asked for food.
Finally, we met Iana Matei. It was after midnight. She let Diana finish her Big Mac and fries before introducing herself. Then we all went to an apartment owned by the shelter organisation. It would become Diana’s home, shared with five other girls picked up from the streets, but - to her delight - including her own bed.
At the shelter, Diana started telling us her story. She had been on the streets for years since disaster struck her family in Timisoara, in western Romania and she was separated from her brother and parents. While working as a prostitute, a client had promised to marry her.
"But he never came back. I don't know why. I wanted to take care of him. I want to wash for my man. I want to cook for him. And I want six children. Twins." Diana said, while showing us the wounds from the chain with which she was beaten.
The shelter director explained that her story could be exaggerated. "It's normal that she would lie. Everybody lied to her and took advantage of her. Why would she even believe me when I tell her I want to help her?" Iana asked.
"Lots of people told her the same thing and they didn't keep their promises. I do believe what she said the pimps did to her. The chain wounds are there. In my experience, these girl only lie about their identity and background, not about what happened while being forced into prostitution," she said.
Diana is one of the toughest cases the shelter has handled. "She doesn't know to read or write. I cannot put her in a school. She never went to school in her life. She's also mentally handicapped so we're looking for a programme for children with special needs,” Iana said. The organisation is continuing to search for an appropriate full-time programme to care for her needs, while also working with the Timisoara police to try to track down her real identity.
The scale of human trafficking is immense. A recent OSCE-sponsored meeting in Skopje, Macedonia, heard how an estimated 200,000 women in the Balkans are victims of human trafficking each year, with the US State Department itself estimating last year that between 700,000 and four million individuals were bought, sold, transported and held against their will worldwide.
According to its latest Trafficking in Persons Report, published in June last year, the State Department found that while the Romanian government has improved its efforts to combat the cross-border crime “it still does not yet fully comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.
It notes that Bucharest’s efforts to investigate and prosecute public officials involved in trafficking “remain limited”. And according to a Human Watch Report last year on Romania, the government’s response to both domestic violence against women and trafficking was “inadequate”.
For now, Diana is doing well at the shelter. She's helping the other girls with the cleaning and the cooking. Her case has not been solved entirely, but for the first time perhaps in years she is at last safe from abuse and is not being traded as if she were an animal.
Paul Cristian Radu is a member of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism and coordinator of an ongoing IWPR investigative report on human trafficking across eight countries in the region.
Undercover investigation reveals how young girls are being beaten, abused and sold for a few hundred of dollars in Bucharest’s back streets.
Paul Cristian Radu paulradu@crji.org
"Can I be sure you're not giving me back to them?" Diana whispered from the backseat of the car. "I’m scared.”
The trembling figure, huddled in a blanket against a cold Bucharest night, had only minutes earlier been just one of the legion of girls for sale in Romania’s human-trafficking market. Driven by fear, her words tumbled out, “They hit me. He stabbed me with a knife. You want to see the wound? I'm hungry. Do you like me? You want sex with me? Can I have your kids afterwards?
“I'll be a good wife. Do you want to marry me? You know, they starved me. Do you want me to take off my blouse? I need to eat something! Promise I will never be starved ever again? I want to smoke, too. And don't forget to buy me chocolate."
Diana - her name has been changed for the purposes of this story -cost us 400 US dollars. As part of a joint investigation by IWPR and the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism, RCIJ, we had just purchased her from a trafficker. A few days before, she had passed New Years Eve chained and freezing in a dog cage.
Now she was on the way to a shelter for victims of the sex slave trade. She could scarcely believe it - from a life of terror she was headed for a hot meal, warm bed, long bath and some human understanding, plus a chance for a new life.
Plucking Diana so dramatically from one world to another was the culmination of an extended investigation into the crime of forced prostitution and human trafficking in Romania. Driven in many cases by dire financial need, young women, such as Diana, are coerced into nightmare lives - tormented and tortured in Romania and sometimes sold on to indentured lives abroad in countries where they cannot speak the language or find any help. Only the extent of the crime compelled us as journalists to cross the line, rescue one of the victims and, in so doing, provide first hand evidence of the brutal trade.
Diana is also mentally retarded. She can’t read or write and suffers from what is termed the "street kids' syndrome" - not knowing when to stop eating. Before she was handed over to a women’s shelter, she consumed three Big Macs, two chocolate bars, three large sodas and then asked for more. But a few days on from her escape, her wounds - at least on the outside - were healing.
GOING UNDER.
Early last December, as part of a team of journalists, we attached hidden cameras to our bodies and entered the hidden world of the traffickers.
The idea for the project was to investigate the culture of police secrecy and complicity whereby glamorously code-named operations inefficiently targeted the human trafficking business, which seemingly continues to thrive in Romania. Despite tough laws against it, prostitution is booming in Bucharest. Newspapers, internet sites, city nightlife guides and many of the city's 10,000 taxi drivers all point you towards places where you can buy what they call "paid love".
Evenimentul Zilei, a Romanian daily paper, was planning to air a new investigative TV programme on the topic. RCIJ members who had worked for the title had already learned much about human trafficking, and were participating in a broader IWPR regional study into the issue. Information had been gained through law enforcement agencies, published reports and interviews with underworld figures involved in trafficking and with traffickers themselves.
The aim of this joint investigative would be to spark real public debate - and response - by focusing on the individual suffering caused by the crime, from a victim’s point of view. So a plan was devised to go undercover and record the whole story. One journalist would play the role of a foreigner and pretend to buy a girl. The foreigner ruse eased our entry into the world of the pimps, traffickers and middlemen. The foreigner needed a translator and so I took on this identity myself.
To the underworld figures we contacted through the course of the investigation, I was just another guy on the make, trying to get by. Two other two journalists were assigned to follow us unseen. They had the key role of watching over both of us, and monitoring the traffickers' movements.
More practically, we had to worry about our equipment, including hidden cameras, recorders and wires of various kinds, all of which had to pass unnoticed. At the same time, we would have to change videotapes and batteries from time to time, which limited our freedom of movement and sometimes spelled serious trouble.
THE SEARCH.
Our first encounter began with a taxi driver.
"Hi mate,” I offered. “My friend is a foreigner and he'd like to have some fun with girls tonight. Can you help us?"
"Sure, sir. Hop in. I know a girl you will like a lot,” the driver replied. “She's not one of those working the streets. No sir, she's a friend. She lives in a flat close by, near the national football stadium. She chooses her own clients. She's clean and young and she charges 800,000 lei (25 dollars) per hour at most. You can tell your friend that if he doesn't like this girl, we can go see some others."
The taxi driver was not aware that his car was being followed by another member of the RCIJ team, who was supposed to interfere if the situation got ugly.
But the situation didn't get ugly. The taxi driver was happy to take the money for the ride, even though the foreigner said he did not fancy the girl. The driver was only sorry he couldn't reach a friend who had other girls available. The pimp's mobile phone was turned off.
After visiting a few other places where prostitutes were available, we felt we had taken enough footage for the night. But we had nothing new. On videotape, Bucharest was just another illegal version of Amsterdam's famous red-light district. We tried to find cab drivers who would offer underage girls, but they all said this was too tricky.
Over the following days, we had similar experiences with hotel security men from four expensive Bucharest hotels. They all offered prostitutes and a discount price for the hotel room if we took the girls they offered. The girls were either in the hotel lobby or bar or just a telephone call away. The men said it was no problem if we brought in girls they did not know, though we would have to pay the full price for the room.
After a few nights, it was time to move from the streets and the front men to confront the system’s key figures: the traffickers themselves.
THE TRAFFICKERS.
The police car was just in front of us. For a moment, we thought we had been unlucky. We knew the Matasari neighbourhood, near central Bucharest, would be packed on a Friday night with pimps offering their services on street corners. And now the car bearing the number plate of the 8th Bucharest police station was just in front of us.
But to our surprise, the group of pimps on Pache Protopopescu Street did not vanish when officers pulled over, only 15 metres away.
Our curiosity grew, and we stopped the car when we noticed someone get out of the police car and join the pimps' gang. We stopped our vehicle too and the same man - the one who had got out of the police car - asked us if we would like a prostitute.
"Hi man. Would you like to try one for yourself,” he asked. “It's cheap and you'll be satisfied. Don't worry about the police. They're my friends." After briefly repeating the story about my foreign friend seeking some fun, I insisted the police car might get in the way. It had not moved, however, and the cops seemed uninterested in our conversation. At this point, the pimp wanted to deal directly with the foreigner. Tired of my complaints about the police presence, the pimp then called a friend who could speak a little English.
"Police. No problem. Police friends," the woman said, while urging us to follow her to an adjacent street where she and the pimp were minding the girls.
By now the group of pimps started shouting at us, so we had no choice but to let them get into our car and follow their directions. After a short drive through dark, narrow streets, they told us to stop. In front of an old rusty iron gate, we were told to wait.
One by one, the girls started coming to our car. They were shivering from the cold. The expressions on their faces were utterly indifferent, as if they could see through us. From then on, I noticed the same look on all the prostitutes' faces.
We decided to call the show off.
"Look man, you have really nice girls here,” I said. “But we have to go eat and we'll come back later. OK?"
"Sure. I can recommend you a restaurant just around the corner. You can take the girl there, too," the pimp said. He looked disappointed when we turned down the offer.
We took off in a hurry. It was enough for the night. We had decided Matasari was the right place to look for trafficked women, and returned a few days later. The first thing we had to do was avoid the same street corner where the pimps hooked us last time. We decided to head down the back streets and avoid the main boulevards.
Our plan paid off. We noticed a bearded little man smoking in front of what once had been a beautiful house in the "Little Paris" of pre-Second World War Bucharest. Now the house was only a memory of former times and the little man in his thirties, like the owner, probably did not care about architecture or history. We suspected that he was a pimp and trafficker, and made our approach.
THE DWARF.
"Do you have girls?" I asked.
"Yes, I do. Who's asking?" the man replied.
"This might be a little unusual. But I'm here with this foreigner and he is interested in taking a girl home for the holidays. You know Christmas, New Year's Eve. What do you say?" I said.
"So he wants her for a couple of months? Okay. Nice. Call me the ‘Dwarf’. Friends call me this. We could do good business. Come inside. I might have something for you," said the short, bearded fellow, pointing to a narrow corridor.
We followed him into a small, dark room that had no door but only a curtain leading off it. We were told to wait, until the Dwarf re-appeared from another room with a blonde girl in a miniskirt.
"Ask him if he likes her. She has no marks, no plagues. Tell your friend to touch her breasts to see they are firm," he said, slapping her bottom. The blonde did not say a word, though a bitter smile flashed across her face for a moment. I felt the poor girl had been humiliated enough and told Dwarf to go outside to discuss business. He let the girl return to the other room.
In the meantime, a taxi driver, who had parked his company cab in front of the house, came in and followed her. He was there for what Dwarf called a "quickie".
"You know what? Your friend can try her, too. I tell you she's good," Dwarf said, describing what she was capable of doing in graphic terms.
We had heard and seen enough. We told Dwarf we would return with money. But back in the car we found our battery, wires and recorder were not working, so that we had only poor quality images and sound on the mini-DV tape. We would have to go back. This time a third RCIJ member accompanied us, posing as the landlord of the apartment that the foreigner was renting and claiming he also wanted to see the girl.
Dwarf agreed and showed us the girl again.
"Hey, me and my wife have decided something. We are going to give you the girl for good. We're going to sell her to you for 300 US dollars. You pay the money and can do whatever you want with her," he said, looking straight into my eyes.
"Well,” I hesitated. “Let me ask my friend. We could be interested.” I enquired about her age, where she was from and whether she had identity documents.
"What do we do if the police question us about her? How do we take care of her? You need to tell us,” I said. “We're beginners and could learn a lot from you."
Feeling proud that he could teach us something, Dwarf started talking and this time the electronic recording equipment was working properly.
"If anyone questions you about the girl's age, you just say she's 18 and she has no documents because they were stolen. Just feed her, keep her in your apartment and don't let her outside unaccompanied. You'll have no problems. I didn't have any problem so won't have any either," the trafficker insisted.
After a further lecture about handling the girl, we told him we'd go get the money and be back in no time. As Dwarf and his wife approached our car, another RCIJ member - who had not left the car - got into conversation with Dwarf, asking if the girl he wanted to offer us was the one standing next to him.
"No, this is my wife," Dwarf replied coldly. The tension eased when I asked if he wanted payment in Romanian lei or dollars. He said it did not matter.
"Just don't make me wait too long," he said. "I'm not going to offer her to clients for two hours. This means I lose money if you don't come back." We took off and left Matasari. We had no intention of coming back.
It was still December, and we spent the next few days investigating in other parts of Bucharest. We talked to pimps, and almost every one had girls for sale.
A trafficker in the main Bucharest railway station wanted to sell us a girl for 1,000 dollars - indicating the price with broad marks sketched with his foot in the thick snowdrift.
RETURN TO MATASARI.
After the New Year, the logical next step for the investigation was, inescapably, to go through with a “purchase”.
No professional reporter would want to cross legal bounds or provide funds directly to criminals participating in the trade. But to get to the heart of the trafficking story, and provide images that could drive home the enormity of it all, we would have to return to Matasari.
For this purpose, the editor of Evenimentul Zilei handed us the equivalent of 600 dollars. We consented with mixed professional and personal feelings. But we felt the public interest, as well as that of the girl herself, were overriding. The girl, it was agreed, would be immediately released into the care of the NGO Reaching Out, which tends to prostitutes and sex slaves.
The final part of the plan was laid in place when Iana Matei, the director of the organisation, confirmed that she was ready to take in any girl we were able to rescue.
The NGO, which had started work in 1998, had so far taken in 74 victims of trafficking. Each spent about a year in a shelter, attending courses and gaining qualifications. The programme has been a success story, as only five girls have since returned to prostitution. One is now a psychology student at university.
A few days later we found ourselves back in Matasari, Dwarf's turf. This time, though, we hired two bodyguards to protect us.
I knocked on the door but nobody answered. Dwarf was not at home. But we located him not far away, on the street corner together with other pimps and prostitutes.
"Hi Dwarf! How are you? Get in the car!" I told him. With a superior smile on his face, Dwarf hopped in. The rest of the guys stared enviously, as Dwarf was driven away. The foreigner, Dwarf and I sat in the back.
"Hey man I waited for you two weeks ago. You said you'd come and you didn't? What happened? I lost money that night," the trafficker said, with a serious expression.
I cut in, "I apologise, something unexpected. . . . Anyway the past is the past. Let's get back to business. Do you still have the girl?"
"No man, I don't. I sold her,” he said. “And yesterday evening I sold another one. But what is this. Who is the driver? Is he a cop? I can sense he's a cop. What's wrong with you man? I liked you the last time. You came to me by yourself, no problem. But now? What's this?"
Dwarf was nervous. In a sense, he was right. The driver was an ex-policeman in the special action unit who’d left his job for a better salary in the private sector. I assured Dwarf that everything was all right and he had nothing to fear. Finally, he relented.
"It's God's will man. I put myself in your hands. I trust you because you seem all right. But I don't have a girl for sale tonight. Maybe you can come some other time. Just give me your phone number and I'll call you up when I have something," he said.
I insisted that the foreigner had the money on him and wanted to buy a girl that same night. Convinced, Dwarf agreed to take us to a few places where girls might be on sale.
"We'll start first with the place where I sold a girl the other night. Maybe I can get her back,” he said. “ You must come with me alone, without the driver or the foreigner, and you don't say anything. You'll pay me 400 US dollars for the girl and you don't care how much I pay myself for her. Agreed?"
I accepted and we set off. Unfortunately, these traffickers had sold her, too. But they told us who had bought her and we drove to another house, still in the Matasari neighbourhood.
We entered a house and an almost surreal scene presented itself. Dwarf introduced me to Bila, a drug dealer also in the human trafficking business. Bila was lying on a sofa with a needle in his left arm. He was so high he could hardly shake hands. He said he didn't know about the girl we were looking for.
"See man. I don't do drugs. Drugs make you look stupid. Isn't it better to just drink a good vodka and get drunk like hell?" Dwarf asked, nodding his head with disapproval.
The trail had gone dead, so I asked Dwarf if he knew other traffickers who might have girls that night. After a moment of hesitation, he said we'd better go to the main railway station area. We stopped our car very often in this new area and Dwarf, who seemed to know everyone on the street, finally came up with a lead.
"We'll go to Buric,” he announced triumphantly. “He has a girl on sale."
FINDING DIANA.
Minutes later, we met Diana inside Buric's house. She was on sale.
"The competition is so tough lately. They are bringing in beautiful girls from Ukraine and I'm losing my business," Buric's wife complained to Dwarf. She was carrying a baby in her arms. "Nobody wants my girls anymore. They'd rather pay extra and go with those long-legged girls. We're living hard times."
She talked very openly, as Dwarf explained that I was a good friend and that he wanted to buy the girl for himself. "OK, Dwarf, do you want her or not?" the woman asked, pushing Diana forwards into the light. She looked about 16 but the woman insisted she was 19. "She's not sick. The only thing is that she eats too much. She always asks for food," Buric's wife added.
We returned to the car, took some of the money and Dwarf paid the woman for Diana.
The temperature outside was minus five degrees Celsius and the girl was wearing only a thin skirt, high heels and no socks.
"Please give her a jacket or something. It's too cold outside for her," I told the woman who was counting her money after handing the baby to Dwarf.
"We don't have any other clothes for her. Don't you see we are poor? She won't die. She's used to cold," the woman replied without even a glance. Happy with the money she had got, she told us she could sell us some other girls, too.
We held Diana's hand going back to the car because the narrow street was covered with ice and she was stumbling in her high heels. She was confused and kept asking us what we were going to do with her. Dwarf assured her that she was going to be OK and that “her stars had just changed”.
We left the grateful trafficker in front of the railway station after he counted his money on our hidden camera. With the money in his hands he seemed relieved.
"Wow. Good. Good business. I was so afraid I'd be arrested. Give me your phone number and I'll call you when I have another girl on sale," he said. We declined and headed off.
GIMME SHELTER.
In the car, Diana burst into conversation. "Are you sure you're not giving me back to Buric? Who's going to marry me? Buric and his wife beat me, “ she said. “ He cut me with a knife. He kept me in the dog kennel on New Year's Eve. They forced me in there naked and it was so cold. I don't want to return there. Ever. Why did he turn this way? You're driving back to Buric. I'm scared. Please, don't give me back."
Diana continued to voice her fears throughout the one-hour journey to the women’s refuge in Pitesti. She was so confused that she couldn't believe she was on her way to a shelter where she would be taken care of. Sitting in the back seat, she offered the one thing she was forced to surrender continually while in the traffickers’ hands: sex.
She couldn't believe her eyes when we stopped at a petrol station and bought chocolate, sodas and cigarettes. She didn't even smoke but wanted to see if we would buy her everything she asked. I knew she did not smoke when she asked me to buy a cigarette brand that had vanished a long time ago. She ate the chocolate in seconds and asked for food.
Finally, we met Iana Matei. It was after midnight. She let Diana finish her Big Mac and fries before introducing herself. Then we all went to an apartment owned by the shelter organisation. It would become Diana’s home, shared with five other girls picked up from the streets, but - to her delight - including her own bed.
At the shelter, Diana started telling us her story. She had been on the streets for years since disaster struck her family in Timisoara, in western Romania and she was separated from her brother and parents. While working as a prostitute, a client had promised to marry her.
"But he never came back. I don't know why. I wanted to take care of him. I want to wash for my man. I want to cook for him. And I want six children. Twins." Diana said, while showing us the wounds from the chain with which she was beaten.
The shelter director explained that her story could be exaggerated. "It's normal that she would lie. Everybody lied to her and took advantage of her. Why would she even believe me when I tell her I want to help her?" Iana asked.
"Lots of people told her the same thing and they didn't keep their promises. I do believe what she said the pimps did to her. The chain wounds are there. In my experience, these girl only lie about their identity and background, not about what happened while being forced into prostitution," she said.
Diana is one of the toughest cases the shelter has handled. "She doesn't know to read or write. I cannot put her in a school. She never went to school in her life. She's also mentally handicapped so we're looking for a programme for children with special needs,” Iana said. The organisation is continuing to search for an appropriate full-time programme to care for her needs, while also working with the Timisoara police to try to track down her real identity.
The scale of human trafficking is immense. A recent OSCE-sponsored meeting in Skopje, Macedonia, heard how an estimated 200,000 women in the Balkans are victims of human trafficking each year, with the US State Department itself estimating last year that between 700,000 and four million individuals were bought, sold, transported and held against their will worldwide.
According to its latest Trafficking in Persons Report, published in June last year, the State Department found that while the Romanian government has improved its efforts to combat the cross-border crime “it still does not yet fully comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.
It notes that Bucharest’s efforts to investigate and prosecute public officials involved in trafficking “remain limited”. And according to a Human Watch Report last year on Romania, the government’s response to both domestic violence against women and trafficking was “inadequate”.
For now, Diana is doing well at the shelter. She's helping the other girls with the cleaning and the cooking. Her case has not been solved entirely, but for the first time perhaps in years she is at last safe from abuse and is not being traded as if she were an animal.
Paul Cristian Radu is a member of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism and coordinator of an ongoing IWPR investigative report on human trafficking across eight countries in the region.
The RAFO CONNECTION
Wednesday, October 8 2003: Organized White Collar Crime
The RAFO CONNECTION
By Paul Cristian Radu (paulradu@crji.org) and Valentin Zaschievici
The collapse of the BANCOREX, one of the leading Romanian state owned banks, in the late ‘90s, meant over 2 billion US dollars losses for the pockets of the Romanian citizens. Nowadays, the same people, the experts that led BANCOREX to disaster, regrouped and initiated new financial scams that led to enormous losses for Romania.
Our investigation went from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where, after the 2000 political election, the persons behind the BANCOREX collapse regrouped under the umbrella of a company that is active in the oil business. The results: a brand new hole, of thousands of billions lei, in the Romanian economy, two oil refineries on the edge of the bankruptcy and another bank that collapsed.
It’s a beautiful September morning in Vienna. The old Viennese Stock Exchange building opened up its gates for the people that arrive here, on bikes or in latest models of Mercedes, to start their business day. The corridors are invaded by people that stroll through the walls, through metallic plates that lead them to the offices of world’s most famous companies. On the right there’s Symantec, one of the leading anti-virus software’s producers, on the left it’s Reuters, leader on the news market, upstairs is Nikkei, the Japanese business symbol. The corridors on the ground floor lead us, though, to a wooden massive door, behind which lie the answers to Romania’s worst financial disasters. Behind the door there’s a decade of corruption and a group of people that masterminded the collapse of a big chunk of the economy. Next the door there’s a metallic plate on which it is inscribed:
*RAFO GMBH
The RAFO GMBH company has been established in November 2000, only one week after the PSD(which was the ruling party between 1989-1996) won the parliamentary elections and one year before the RAFO Onesti refinery(one of the biggest refineries in Romania, situated in the city of Onesti) was officially privatized.
The year 2000 was a very rough year for the RAFO Onesti workers. At that time, the refinery was still state owned and the workers were out on the streets, marching and shouting: “We want to work!; Onesti, don’t forget, RAFO is your chance!”. The conflict situation culminated when the revolted workers blocked a national road.
In the meantime, quietly, one thousand kilometers away from the protests, a deal, involving big names and big money, was done.
The Band of Ten in Wien
According to records from the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, the RAFO GMBH company has been established on the 20th of November 2000 and has its headquarters in the center of the Austrian capital, at Schottenring 16, in the building of the Vienna Stock Market. The president of the company, that has a social capital of 281,000 EURO, is the Austrian citizen, Levente Solyom. Also, in the company, there are: Corneliu Iacobov, Razvan Temesan, Andrei Serban, Toader Gaureanu, Gheorghe Chealfa, Marin Marin, Bogdan Iuliu Dumitrescu, Costel Bancila si Ioan Teodor Caramizaru. Together with them, in the RAFO GMBH, there is associated, as a juridical person, the RAFO Onesti, the Romanian refinery. In fact, RAFO Onesti holds 49 per cent of the company, while the majority, of 51 percent is held by Iacobov, Temesan and Comp.
The Financial Disasters Experts
Corneliu Iacobov. The Moldavian businessman is the owner of the RAFO Onesti refinery, that currently has 6,000 billion lei worth debts to the Romanian state. This is one of the main “black holes’ in the Romanian economy. Iacobov, also, led to disaster another refinery, the Darmanesti refinery, that had to close its gates because it has 3,000 billion lei worth debts to the state.
But Iacobov is one of the main sponsors for the ruling party, the PSD. He, officialy, contributed to the PSD 2000 electoral campaign with 75 million lei.
Despite the debts he has to the state, Iacobov is the owner of the only five stars hotel in Romania and is organizing the RAFO auto rally.
Razvan Temesan. He is nicknamed the “Bancorex Undertaker” but is considered by the Romanian president, Ion Iliescu, “one of the best qualified managers that the Romanian banking system ever had”. Temesan’s name is associated to the biggest banking collapse in the history of Romania that led to the disintegration of Bancorex and to the biggest financial loss in the history of the country: over 2 billion US dollars. Temesan had to do, as well, with the collapse of another bank, Banca Romana de Scont(BRS), for which he was the main financial consultant. The BRS file is currently pending between Supreme Court of Justice and the National Anti-Corruption Prosecution.
Levente Solyom. The name of the president of RAFO GMBH is linked to a loan that was taken, after Iacobov’s intervention, from Temesan’s Bancorex. The money was never returned.
Andrei Serban. His name is connected to a 300,000 US dollars loan taken from Bancorex on the same way like Solyom. Serban is also a PSD sponsor and Iacobov’s right hand.
Bogdan Iuliu Dumitrescu. He was a director of the Unirea bank and had to do with the collapse of this bank. The Unirea bank has been established by Iacobov, while he was the president of the Private Property Fund II(FPP II, the FPPs were early forms of privatizations in Romania, the FPP were established in order to manage the so-called “property coupons” that were given to all Romanian citizens and that meant the citizen is a shareholder of the State property.
Marin Marin. He was, until August 2003, the head of APAPS Bacau (this is the state agency that supervises the privatization process), the representative of the Romanian state. In 2001, when RAFO Onesti was bought by Iacobov, the state decided to erase the debts that RAFO had to pay. The state erased 3,000 billion lei debts and the refinery was, practically, given as a gift to Iacobov. This move can be better understand if we take into consideration the fact Marin Marin, the State representative, has been an associate of Iacobov even from 2000 when they established together RAFO GMBH. Despite this, right now, RAFO Onesti has more than 6,000 billion lei debts to the state.
Toader Gaureanu. He was, until three weeks ago, the general director of RAFO Onesti. Right after we questioned him about the RAFO GMBH affaire, Gaureanu left his position. He now works for a company that imports oil for RAFO.
All the Others. Are very colse to Iacobov’s businesses. They are all tied to the structures created around RAFO Onesti.
*A Complete Cycle of Corruption
The RAFO GMBH is one of the clearest examples of how the Romanian state is defrauded without anyone being made responsible for it. In fact, RAFO GMBH is the foreign link of a complete corruption circle.
THE FIRM. Our investigation found that the president of RAFO GMBH, Levente Solyom, has established a number of companies in Romania. Among these we identified the AUSTROM 95 SA, a company from the town of Tusnad, Harghita county, of which Solyom was a majority shareholder and president. According to the document 8.5.1.6 from the SIF Moldova(former FPP II, that was headed by Iacobov), AUSTROM 95 SA borrowed, few years ago, 470,000 US dollars from the Temesan’s Bancorex. The money was given to Solyom’s company after the FPP II guaranteed, under Corneliu Iacobov’s signature, for the AUSTROM 95 SA’ solvability. The money was never returned to the Bancorex and the bank collapsed because of the never repaid loans(of which lots were given under Iacobov’s signature) of the same kind.
THE BANCRUPTCY. Nowadays, the Romanian state sued the SIF Moldova(former FPP II) in order to recover the Bancorex money. There’s a little problem though: the AUSTROM 95 SA company has disappeared a while ago. It went bankrupt. This situation and the fact that Solyom is now associated with Razvan Temesan and Corneliu Iacobov in the RAFO GMBH company, points out the direct connection between the former BANCOREX president, the unpaid loans from this bank and the fact that Temesan is still compensated for his services. In fact, during Temesan’s presidency hundreds of loans were given to PSD officials, military and police officers and companies with strong ties to the PSD.
CLAIMS. It should be said that Razvan Temesan was arrested four short times for the Bancorex collapse. This happened during 1996-2000 government. He was tried in 17 cases. After the PSD came back in power, in 2000, Temesan was cleared in all this cases in a clear political move. After that, Temesan even declared that he’s going to sue the Romanian state to the European Court in Strasbourg in order to be repaid for the damages he suffered. So far, though, the compensations come through RAFO GMBH.
It should also be mentioned here that, while Corneliu Iacobov was the head of FPP II, he guaranteed for companies that took more than 20 million US dollars from Bancorex. This money was never returned. The money went on the same path as the money taken by Solyom’s Aust-Rom 95 SA. All the other companies erased their traces just like Solyom’s company so that the state can recover nothing.
THE SCHEME. As a conclusion we can say that RAFO GMBH is the place where the creditor-Temesan meets the debtor-Solyom and the intermediary-Iacobov. The three of them, backed by the state representative-Marin Marin, created a dirty business scheme that targeted BANCOREX, RAFO Onesti, the Darmanesti refinery, FPP II and other banks and finally defrauded the Romanian state of huge amounts of money.
*”It’s none of your business”
Very few of those involved in the RAFO GMBH affair wanted to speak about it. Corneliu Iacobov declined all our invitations and never answered his mobile phone. Our attempts to contact him through his business associates hit a stone wall, too. We managed to get on the phone Razvan Temesan but he told us that journalists should know that they should take into consideration “auto-censorship”. He told us that he is convinced that the investigation on RAFO GMBH is sponsored by his rivals. Temesan refused to tell us about the circumstances that led him to entering the business with Levente Solyom.
Levente Solyom declined to talk to us even when we went to Vienna. He told his secretary to tell us that he is on a business trip despite the fact that we saw him in Vienna. The night before he was in the courtyard of his fancy villa in the 19th district, the most expensive neighborhood of Vienna.
Marin Marin said he has nothing to tell us.
Andrei Serban said that, indeed he is associated in RAFO GMBH, but that he doesn’t know anything about this company.
Toader Gaureanu. The former general director of RAFO Onesti told us that our work is in vain because no newspaper will publish the story because the paper for newspapers is made at the Letea factory.(the Letea factory, the only factory for newspaper paper is owned by a person that is related to Corneliu Iacobov)
The RAFO CONNECTION
By Paul Cristian Radu (paulradu@crji.org) and Valentin Zaschievici
The collapse of the BANCOREX, one of the leading Romanian state owned banks, in the late ‘90s, meant over 2 billion US dollars losses for the pockets of the Romanian citizens. Nowadays, the same people, the experts that led BANCOREX to disaster, regrouped and initiated new financial scams that led to enormous losses for Romania.
Our investigation went from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where, after the 2000 political election, the persons behind the BANCOREX collapse regrouped under the umbrella of a company that is active in the oil business. The results: a brand new hole, of thousands of billions lei, in the Romanian economy, two oil refineries on the edge of the bankruptcy and another bank that collapsed.
It’s a beautiful September morning in Vienna. The old Viennese Stock Exchange building opened up its gates for the people that arrive here, on bikes or in latest models of Mercedes, to start their business day. The corridors are invaded by people that stroll through the walls, through metallic plates that lead them to the offices of world’s most famous companies. On the right there’s Symantec, one of the leading anti-virus software’s producers, on the left it’s Reuters, leader on the news market, upstairs is Nikkei, the Japanese business symbol. The corridors on the ground floor lead us, though, to a wooden massive door, behind which lie the answers to Romania’s worst financial disasters. Behind the door there’s a decade of corruption and a group of people that masterminded the collapse of a big chunk of the economy. Next the door there’s a metallic plate on which it is inscribed:
*RAFO GMBH
The RAFO GMBH company has been established in November 2000, only one week after the PSD(which was the ruling party between 1989-1996) won the parliamentary elections and one year before the RAFO Onesti refinery(one of the biggest refineries in Romania, situated in the city of Onesti) was officially privatized.
The year 2000 was a very rough year for the RAFO Onesti workers. At that time, the refinery was still state owned and the workers were out on the streets, marching and shouting: “We want to work!; Onesti, don’t forget, RAFO is your chance!”. The conflict situation culminated when the revolted workers blocked a national road.
In the meantime, quietly, one thousand kilometers away from the protests, a deal, involving big names and big money, was done.
The Band of Ten in Wien
According to records from the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, the RAFO GMBH company has been established on the 20th of November 2000 and has its headquarters in the center of the Austrian capital, at Schottenring 16, in the building of the Vienna Stock Market. The president of the company, that has a social capital of 281,000 EURO, is the Austrian citizen, Levente Solyom. Also, in the company, there are: Corneliu Iacobov, Razvan Temesan, Andrei Serban, Toader Gaureanu, Gheorghe Chealfa, Marin Marin, Bogdan Iuliu Dumitrescu, Costel Bancila si Ioan Teodor Caramizaru. Together with them, in the RAFO GMBH, there is associated, as a juridical person, the RAFO Onesti, the Romanian refinery. In fact, RAFO Onesti holds 49 per cent of the company, while the majority, of 51 percent is held by Iacobov, Temesan and Comp.
The Financial Disasters Experts
Corneliu Iacobov. The Moldavian businessman is the owner of the RAFO Onesti refinery, that currently has 6,000 billion lei worth debts to the Romanian state. This is one of the main “black holes’ in the Romanian economy. Iacobov, also, led to disaster another refinery, the Darmanesti refinery, that had to close its gates because it has 3,000 billion lei worth debts to the state.
But Iacobov is one of the main sponsors for the ruling party, the PSD. He, officialy, contributed to the PSD 2000 electoral campaign with 75 million lei.
Despite the debts he has to the state, Iacobov is the owner of the only five stars hotel in Romania and is organizing the RAFO auto rally.
Razvan Temesan. He is nicknamed the “Bancorex Undertaker” but is considered by the Romanian president, Ion Iliescu, “one of the best qualified managers that the Romanian banking system ever had”. Temesan’s name is associated to the biggest banking collapse in the history of Romania that led to the disintegration of Bancorex and to the biggest financial loss in the history of the country: over 2 billion US dollars. Temesan had to do, as well, with the collapse of another bank, Banca Romana de Scont(BRS), for which he was the main financial consultant. The BRS file is currently pending between Supreme Court of Justice and the National Anti-Corruption Prosecution.
Levente Solyom. The name of the president of RAFO GMBH is linked to a loan that was taken, after Iacobov’s intervention, from Temesan’s Bancorex. The money was never returned.
Andrei Serban. His name is connected to a 300,000 US dollars loan taken from Bancorex on the same way like Solyom. Serban is also a PSD sponsor and Iacobov’s right hand.
Bogdan Iuliu Dumitrescu. He was a director of the Unirea bank and had to do with the collapse of this bank. The Unirea bank has been established by Iacobov, while he was the president of the Private Property Fund II(FPP II, the FPPs were early forms of privatizations in Romania, the FPP were established in order to manage the so-called “property coupons” that were given to all Romanian citizens and that meant the citizen is a shareholder of the State property.
Marin Marin. He was, until August 2003, the head of APAPS Bacau (this is the state agency that supervises the privatization process), the representative of the Romanian state. In 2001, when RAFO Onesti was bought by Iacobov, the state decided to erase the debts that RAFO had to pay. The state erased 3,000 billion lei debts and the refinery was, practically, given as a gift to Iacobov. This move can be better understand if we take into consideration the fact Marin Marin, the State representative, has been an associate of Iacobov even from 2000 when they established together RAFO GMBH. Despite this, right now, RAFO Onesti has more than 6,000 billion lei debts to the state.
Toader Gaureanu. He was, until three weeks ago, the general director of RAFO Onesti. Right after we questioned him about the RAFO GMBH affaire, Gaureanu left his position. He now works for a company that imports oil for RAFO.
All the Others. Are very colse to Iacobov’s businesses. They are all tied to the structures created around RAFO Onesti.
*A Complete Cycle of Corruption
The RAFO GMBH is one of the clearest examples of how the Romanian state is defrauded without anyone being made responsible for it. In fact, RAFO GMBH is the foreign link of a complete corruption circle.
THE FIRM. Our investigation found that the president of RAFO GMBH, Levente Solyom, has established a number of companies in Romania. Among these we identified the AUSTROM 95 SA, a company from the town of Tusnad, Harghita county, of which Solyom was a majority shareholder and president. According to the document 8.5.1.6 from the SIF Moldova(former FPP II, that was headed by Iacobov), AUSTROM 95 SA borrowed, few years ago, 470,000 US dollars from the Temesan’s Bancorex. The money was given to Solyom’s company after the FPP II guaranteed, under Corneliu Iacobov’s signature, for the AUSTROM 95 SA’ solvability. The money was never returned to the Bancorex and the bank collapsed because of the never repaid loans(of which lots were given under Iacobov’s signature) of the same kind.
THE BANCRUPTCY. Nowadays, the Romanian state sued the SIF Moldova(former FPP II) in order to recover the Bancorex money. There’s a little problem though: the AUSTROM 95 SA company has disappeared a while ago. It went bankrupt. This situation and the fact that Solyom is now associated with Razvan Temesan and Corneliu Iacobov in the RAFO GMBH company, points out the direct connection between the former BANCOREX president, the unpaid loans from this bank and the fact that Temesan is still compensated for his services. In fact, during Temesan’s presidency hundreds of loans were given to PSD officials, military and police officers and companies with strong ties to the PSD.
CLAIMS. It should be said that Razvan Temesan was arrested four short times for the Bancorex collapse. This happened during 1996-2000 government. He was tried in 17 cases. After the PSD came back in power, in 2000, Temesan was cleared in all this cases in a clear political move. After that, Temesan even declared that he’s going to sue the Romanian state to the European Court in Strasbourg in order to be repaid for the damages he suffered. So far, though, the compensations come through RAFO GMBH.
It should also be mentioned here that, while Corneliu Iacobov was the head of FPP II, he guaranteed for companies that took more than 20 million US dollars from Bancorex. This money was never returned. The money went on the same path as the money taken by Solyom’s Aust-Rom 95 SA. All the other companies erased their traces just like Solyom’s company so that the state can recover nothing.
THE SCHEME. As a conclusion we can say that RAFO GMBH is the place where the creditor-Temesan meets the debtor-Solyom and the intermediary-Iacobov. The three of them, backed by the state representative-Marin Marin, created a dirty business scheme that targeted BANCOREX, RAFO Onesti, the Darmanesti refinery, FPP II and other banks and finally defrauded the Romanian state of huge amounts of money.
*”It’s none of your business”
Very few of those involved in the RAFO GMBH affair wanted to speak about it. Corneliu Iacobov declined all our invitations and never answered his mobile phone. Our attempts to contact him through his business associates hit a stone wall, too. We managed to get on the phone Razvan Temesan but he told us that journalists should know that they should take into consideration “auto-censorship”. He told us that he is convinced that the investigation on RAFO GMBH is sponsored by his rivals. Temesan refused to tell us about the circumstances that led him to entering the business with Levente Solyom.
Levente Solyom declined to talk to us even when we went to Vienna. He told his secretary to tell us that he is on a business trip despite the fact that we saw him in Vienna. The night before he was in the courtyard of his fancy villa in the 19th district, the most expensive neighborhood of Vienna.
Marin Marin said he has nothing to tell us.
Andrei Serban said that, indeed he is associated in RAFO GMBH, but that he doesn’t know anything about this company.
Toader Gaureanu. The former general director of RAFO Onesti told us that our work is in vain because no newspaper will publish the story because the paper for newspapers is made at the Letea factory.(the Letea factory, the only factory for newspaper paper is owned by a person that is related to Corneliu Iacobov)
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