Americans Against Corruption

Romania’s “worst ever” scandal revealed in new book

Basescu: The Shame of Romania is the title of a new book that charts the course of the Romanian merchant and oceanic fishing fleets as they sailed across a sea of corruption, disappearing into their own Bermuda Triangle.  It has been called “The greatest corruption case in the history of Romania.”

This thoroughly researched and documented report covers the information waterfront, from extensive media reports to parliamentary investigation to court proceedings.  It’s a tale of nearly 40 years of corruption, deceit, political and economic nepotism and old fashioned fraud.

In his rise from ordinary seaman to ship’s captain in the Communist system, with a possible detour through the feared Securitate, to mayor of Bucharest, transport minister and ultimately national president, “Traian Basescu has displayed an almost contemptuous disregard for the rule of law and an ongoing propensity for abuse of power,” says Jonathan Harper, author of the expose.

Harper is the pen name of a longtime observer of the Romanian scene whose identity had to be concealed to protect his sources and his own security.

His book is packed with revelations and questions about the record and performance of the deck hand who became president.

The book asks some critical the questions:

Who was responsible for Romania losing its merchant marine and fishing fleets and winding up with a pile of foreign debts instead?   Where are the ships today? How did some of the best wind up in the hands of some leading Romanian politicians.  Who profited?  How much was Traian Basescu paid as a director of the Norwegian venture?  What about reports of Basescu’s ties to the dreaded Securitate? What role did the President’s brother, Mircea Basescu, play in the disappearance of five shiploads of explosives and ammunition bound from Thailand to Romania that may have wound up going to the Angolan rebel group UNITA and other militants?  Was there a link between some involved in that case and the terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah?

The answers can be found among findings like these:

•  “The Fleet File” is the name given to the greatest post-Communist scandal in Romania, and Traian Basescu was at the epicenter. The then-minister of transport was the highest ranking of 80 people charged by prosecutors with malfeasance in the ship deal; charges were initially dropped for lack of evidence, but later reopened in 2004 with additional evidence from a multi-party Parliamentary investigating commission that  “the President had broken nearly every constitutional provision possible,” and “charged him with no less than 19 serious violations of the fundamental law.”   The case has been suspended because of Presidential immunity until Basescu leaves office.

•  Petromin, the government-owned company with the 80 highest tonnage ships and under his jurisdiction, was soon driven aground by poor management.  A number of ships, worth tens of millions of dollars, were heavily mortgaged and wound up being sold off for a dollar each, and others were seized in foreign ports to meet unpaid debts. Petromin was left with no ships and $20 million in debt to an Oslo bank.

• The collapse of the company and the disappearance of the ships occurred on the watch of Traian Basescu, who was not only Minister of Transport but also served as acting director of a joint venture between Petromin and its Norwegian partner, raising questions of conflict of interest. The General Division of State Financial Control estimated the cost of Petromin’s mismanagement in the 1991-1999 period at more than $150 million.

•  Cotidianul, the Romanian daily newspaper, called the Fleet File “The greatest corruption case in the history of Romania.”   It “burst like a soap bubble,” thanks to an electronics engineer and an accountant digging through the 192 volumes and nearly 50,000 pages of the Fleet File; they were able to show that the sale of the 15 commercial ships belonging to Petromin cost the state more than $300 million, although some creative accounting by Petromin listed them as virtually worthless by discounting them for mortgages and depreciation, according to Cotidianul.

• Throughout his career, questions have been raised about Basescu’s links to the Securitate, the security services of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and what role that may have played in his meteoric rise from lowly seaman to one of its youngest ship’s captains ever to political leader. Those links are understandable mysterious. Several sources quoted in the book suggest the speed of his rise and the nature of his assignments reflect the kind of pull that the intelligence service could assert for one of its favored.  According to the “Allexperts.com” website, Basescu “was repeatedly accused of involvement in the Communist regime’s infamous Securtate, although no concrete evidence ever surfaced.”

•  There’s a suspicious twist to the case of Ovidiu Ohanesian, a Romanian-Armenian journalist with the daily newspaper Romania Liberia, was held hostage in Iraq for nearly two months in 2008. President Basescu sent a close friend to Baghdad to negotiate the release of the journalists; the former captive thinks the kidnapping was organized by “a close circle around the Cotroceni (Presidential residence) consisting of officers, politicians and businessmen close to President Traian Basescu,” Jurnalul National reported, including one figure reportedly with ties to the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hizbullah.

Is Traian Basescu a throwback to the corrupt and autocratic old Romania?

Over the years there have been charges that the Basescu family and friends have financially profited from various enterprises, public and private, going back to the days when the current president was a ship’s master, the mayor of Bucharest, the Minister of Transport and eventually president.  Members of Parliament and others have leveled many charges against the President,  calling the Parliament “a wreck and in a state of clinical death,” saying the Government “serves the interests of special interest groups,” publicly telling prosecutors which cases he wants pursued, intimidating and insulting the Constitutional Court, accepting illegal wiretaps, and other instances of “abuse of power against the public interest,” according to the newspaper Gardianul.

These are the questions and findings of Basescu: The Shame of Romania.  Copies are available by contacting: admin@americansagainstcorruption.org

American Committee Against Corruption
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