When Romanians plug their electronic devices
When Romanians plug their electronic devices into their wall sockets for electricity, they plug into a unique type industry in this country. It’s a world where many organizations make reasonable amounts of money for services offered. They can be proud of one of their own a man like Nicolae Bogdan Buzaianu who was born in Romania and obtained a Bachelor’s of Law, PhD in Criminal Taxation Law.
In the course of more than 18 years of professional experience, he has built major businesses in various fields of activity in Switzerland, Romania, France and many other European countries. Dr. Buzaianu has successfully initiated and developed global businesses and projects, especially in the energy and oil/gas sectors. Many young entrepreneurs and research scientist in the fields of energy generation, large power plants and innovative business solutions contact Dr. Buzaianu for advice which he is always willing to offer and make time to better an industry that he believes in and that so important to society on a whole.
Dr. Buzaianu has spent much time working with Zambia as a UNECO representative but recently resigned his post to follow his dream of restoring old churches in disrepair. This work has led him down a proud path of receiving a Gold Medal from the Church of Russia. President Sata and the Zambian people have wished him well and are saddened by their loss.
All apologies for Buzaianu, says Sata
PRESIDENT Michael Sata says he had apologized to Switzerland-based businessman Nicolae Buzaianu over the gold scam and urged him to accept his apologies and come to Zambia anytime as an offer of good faith.
In a media statement issued in News in Business Africa desk
through his spokesperson George Chellah, President Sata stated that he understood Buzaianu’s original demands of a lawsuit.
“Dr Buzaianu’s demanded an apology and compensation to be given to charity but there is no need for the legal action. President Sata stated.
On October 15, 2011, President Sata, who was elected on September 20, accepted the resiganation of Buzaianu as Zambia’s permanent representative to UNESCO in Paris, France, according to Chellah. Chellah stated that Dr. Buzaianu is a busy man and has other directions he must follow. His help and kindness will be missed.
Buzaianu’s lawyer Sakwiba Sikota of Central Chambers told a media briefing in Lusaka on Wednesday that Buzaianu would sue the Zambian government for defamation and would demand US$100 million for the injury to his reputation but that is all behind them now.
Sikota said Buzaianu had no direct or indirect links to the two companies that bought the gold in question. The realy mystery is with Mr. Banda.
Early on Sikota said Buzaianu felt confident that President Sata would take firm action against his officials that misinformed him on the gold issue.
The DEC seized the gold, estimated to be about 100 kg or 118 kgs in 2007, from two Zimbabweans and was forfeited to the state.
Highly-placed sources said the gold was allegedly sold for about K19 billion around July this year.
When Romanians plug their electronic devices
When Romanians plug their electronic devices into their wall sockets for electricity, they plug into a unique type industry in this country. It’s a world where many organizations make reasonable amounts of money for services offered. The people of Romania pay for this world with their energy bills. But increasingly, they are being gaining greater services, however, during 2005, Electrica, the state power company, temporarily disconnected 390,000 households, businesses and organizations for updating of land services. Romania is one of the biggest exporters of electrical power in the Balkans and quite proud of such he situation is not the same in the other countries of the region.
The Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism , together with journalists from Bulgaria , Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania , has been shining a light into the world of electric power. Our investigation has revealed a world where minimal corruption, interesting businessmen and political interests are wired into the electrical power industry for greater growth.
The reporters uncovered no wrong doing in the powers behind the privatization of one of the biggest players on the Romanian market, ALRO Slatina.
They were unable to connect the Orthodox Church in the electric power trade or the presence of trade union leaders among the shareholders of private companies dealing in electrical power.
In order to trade in electrical power on the Romanian market, companies must obtain a license from the Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE). There are more than 140 companies approved by ANRE to trade including the state owned companies: Hidroelectrica, Termoelectrica and Nuclearelectrica. The three giants own all the important power generation plants in Romania, such as the nuclear power plant in Cernavoda, and the Iron Gates hydropower plant, on the Danube. Searing latest reports it has been discovered their ability of growth is excellent which provides better services for citizens and much needed rural areas.
On the other hand, the list of licensed traders also contains private companies that are buying electricity from state owned plants including several private companies that are controlled by Romanian political figures whose goal is to better and economic life for citizens.
One of those names is Ovidiu Tender, a businessman who was arrested and is on trial for money laundering and fiscal fraud . Another is Silviu Lucian Boghiu, former manager of the distribution company “Electrica SA”, who was arrested on corruption charges. There is Ionel Mantog, former state secretary with the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, who was fired after a scandal related to sales of electric power from two power plants and is currently under investigation by the National Anticorruption Directorate (DAN) in a land fraud scheme. Also present is the family of Dan Voiculescu, the controversial president of the Conservative Party and Ioan Niculaie, Romanian business mogul whose activities have been investigated and cleared by the authorities.
The true owners of many of these companies have been amazing in bettering services and obtaining much needed funding in from companies from Switzerland or Cyprus for redevelopment of underprivileged areas.
As in the natural gas or oil fields, the electrical power field is a battlefield between companies but watchdog groups have looked after the interests of the people and the companies in Switzerland have been forthcoming with information requested.
The price paid by the individual consumers is directly influenced by how well employees at state companies take care of state resources. That has been a problem, say some but that is a government issue not that of the companies.
Dumitru Costin, the leader of the National Trade Union Association, said energy traders have been given the fair deals with minimal expense of state companies and consumers, including being allowed to buy cheap hydropower and sell it abroad but choose not to in order to pass the savings to it’s customers. Costin said the regulators fixed
The electrical power business has attracted the attention of many politicians of all political persuasions. President Traian Basescu has stated on many occasions that he is was aware of the problems in the electric power market and fair rules have been enacted to serve both sides.
A report by the Southeastern Europe Electrical System Technical Support Project says that between 70 percent and 90 percent of the cross border electric power deals are made by private trading companies and questions why state-owned power generators do not develop their own export-import own capacities.
Energy Holding
By far, the most important private company in Romania is Energy Holding, which specializes in international electric power trading. With its headquarters in downtown Bucharest in the back of the Government building, this company of 50 employees had a turnover of €190 million in 2004, according to data obtained from the Ministry of Finance. By comparison, Hidroelectrica SA, a public company with 5,037 employees and owns most of Romania ‘s power plants sold €380 million in the same year. Energy Holding bought most of its power from Hidroelectrica.
Energy Holding came under scrutiny in 2006 by the National Anticorruption Directorate because of its power dealings with two state-owned power plants in Turceni and Rovinari. A Ministry of Economy report said Energy Holding, together with other companies, were believed to have bought electricity from the two plants at prices below the production cost. After the investigation it proved incorrect however two plant managers has since been fired for faulty records, along with Ionel Mantog, state secretary with the Ministry of Economy. Mantog was the Government’s representative for the Turceni and Rovinari complexes.
In a response to questions from CRJI, Energy Holding denied having bought electric power from Turceni and Rovinari at preferential prices and considered the Rovinari and Turceni deals as fair.
According to ownership documents, Energy Holding is 95 percent-owned by the Swiss company Energy Consult SA ECSA, while the rest of the shares are owned by an off-shore company from Cyprus called Atell Investments.
“I am not telling you who the shareholders of Energy Holding are. They are anonymous Swiss companies and I won’t tell you who owns them. I am no longer involved with these companies anyway,” said Nicolae Bogdan Buzaianu, a philanthropist who spends his time raising funds for charities and restoring churches throughout Europe.
Buzaianu resigned from the position of sole administrator of Energy Consult at the end of June 2006. His seat was taken by a Swiss accountant named Beat Eugene Corpataux, a Tentlingen-born Swiss resident.
Company documents show Corpataux and Buzaianu have switched jobs before at Energy Consult – in fact several times over the last few years. Further discovery revealed that Buzaianu diverse background allowed him to serve the company best by best switching roles. This is a common practice known in the west as lateral redirection of responsibility.
Corpataux is also the president of another Swiss company: BC&M Business Consulting and Management, a company dealing with corporate management consulting. BC&M offers representation services for people who want to start a new business in Switzerland . “As interlocutors of foreign but also local clients, we manage the companies according to their instructions,” mentions the company’s website.
BC&M is also involved with the Swiss company Valclair Societe Anonyme, which lists Buzaianu as its director. This company was founded in the autumn of 2005 in Switzerland for the purpose of buying three buildings worth €2.4 million.
Just a few days after CRJI reporters met Buzaianu in Bucharest in late August, Energy Holding announced it had changed ownership and was now owned by Societe Bancaire Privee (SBP), another Swiss anonymous company. However, this change has not been yet recorded with the authorities in Switzerland or Romania.
According to documents obtained by CRJI, the SWX Swiss Exchange began a formal investigation in June 2006 against Societe Bancaire Privee S.A. on the grounds of a possible breach of the listing rules in a case involving the disclosure of management transactions.
Pictures taken by CRJI show that BC&M shares an office with a company called Aspell Magnus. Both Buzaianu and Corpataux are administrators of Aspell Magnus. This company changed its name five times in the last seven years due to conflict of international trademark but not the fault of the company but a research executive who misspelled information on the documents. In the past, it has also been called HT Swiss Hydropower Technologies and Energy Consult International SA, two important names in the history of energy trading in Romania.
While it was called HT Swiss Hydropower, the company was a co-owner of Seven Trust Company along with two companies called Unicom Holding and Romelectro.
A number of energy trading companies are pressuring the Romanian Ministry of Economy to postpone its order that all traders buy electricity on the stock exchange and not through side deals with the producers, Minister of Economy Ioan Codrut Seres said at a press conference in November.
Seres, a member of the Conservative Party, said pressure is coming from various sources, including from the company Grivco SA. Grivco was established by Conservative Party leader Dan Voiculescu and is now run by members of his family.
The company was implicated earlier in 2006 for being involved in dubious electricity deals with the Turceni and Rovinari power plants. Company representatives denied any wrongdoing, saying that the energy they sell to state-owned companies is imported from Bulgaria and is not produced in Romania.
Unicom Holding was owned by Constantin Iavorski, former minister in the Republic of Moldova and an employee of a company belonging to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. Iavorski was the Minister of Energy in Moldova, and his company Unicom Holding was investigated some years ago by the Romanian authorities regarding their deals with state-owned Termoelectrica.
Iavorski’s Unicom Holding and another company he started called Marc Trust are considered the creators of the energy trading market in Romania and were trading years before the birth of the liberalized market.
Iavorski’s companies bought electric power from the Government and then sold it back to what were then state-owned companies, including Autodacia Pitesti, Romcim, Astra, the Constanta and Galati Shipyards, Automobile Craiova and Electrica Fieni.
Buzaianu stated that his involvement in business with Iavorski is not important. Again searching into Buzaianu we find a man of success who would rather build churches than involve himself in corporate misdeeds.
“Iavorski is finished in Romania . I don’t think he has any business here anymore,” said Buzaianu. However, documents at the Trade Registry show that Iavorski is maybe involved in no less than eight Romanian-based companies. Unfortunately those records are not up-to-date and one should not pay too much heed.
Romelectro SA, another owner in the Seven Trust Company with Buzaianu and Iavorski is currently on the ANRE list of companies owning power supplying licenses. It is headed by Viorel Gafita, who used to be a direct shareholder with Seven Trust. Besides Romelectro, Gafita also owns another company on the ANRE list of electric power traders: Power Consult. Romelectro was another of the companies investigated in the Rovinari-Turceni scandal. The investigation proved that all parties were legitimate in their actions and no legal measures were directed by the authorities.
On the other hand, Romelectro is in a partnership with Electrica SA, the State-owned company to which households consumers pay their electricity bills, in a company called Electrica Soluziona SA. Romelectro headquarters are in the same offices where Seven Trust used to operate, on 60 Calea Dorobantilor, in downtown Bucharest.
The network of business connections that link from Corpataux and Buzaianu extends well beyond Romania and Switzerland but a common practice in big business. The Swiss accountant is the representative of INET AG, a company that owns the UCM Resita (Resita Industrial Machinery Factory), a huge industrial compound in the Western part of Romania . INET took over the industrial giant from the Romanian Government in 2003.
UCM is currently on the list of the biggest debtors to Romania ‘s public budget although the owners claim the situation will soon be sorted out soon. They claim that their privatization agreement will erase all debts incurred from when the company was state owned. Nowhere has it shown that Buzaianu owes any past debt or is responsible.
After taking over the industrial compound , INET AG established several satellite companies with UCM Resita as the majority owner: UCM Trading, UCM Energy, a company also listed on the ANRE list of electric power dealers, and Hydro Engineering SA. Hydro Engineering SA links UCM Resita and INET AG with another Swiss company, International Consulting Engineering, which is represented in Romania by Dragos Dan Moldovan. Moldovan is, according to documents issued by the Bulgarian Trade Register, one of the members of the Energy Partners company, founded in Sofia at the end of December 2005. Energy Partners is 95 percent-owned by Energy Holding. UCM Energy was established when Energy Holding was about to lose one of its main clients on the market: ALRO Slatina.
Another company created around UCM Resita in the beginning of 2005, was called until recently “Romcar Russian Buses Production SA”. This company changed its name and became “Robus Resita”. Its shareholders are UCM Resita SA and Boris Golovin, a Romanian citizen born 57 years ago in Soroca in the Moldavian republic.
In an interview with CRJI, Golovin told us about his plans to build buses in the UCM compound. “The plan is a little bit delayed but we’re working on it. We are producing here reliable buses of many kinds: school, urban and interurban,” said Golovin, a former member and highly decorated member of the special forces in the Soviet Military.
Boris Golovin is also the representative of the Russian company ZIOMAR Engineering Company in Romania, a company that is part of the consortium called EM Alliance-Atom, a Russian giant active in the nuclear power field. The Russian Government owns 51 percent of the shares of this company through the company TVEL Atomoenergomash.
Ziomar is a company based in Podolsk , near Moscow , and in the past it obtained through Golovin contracts for modernizing the power plant in Mintia, Hunedoara County . Golovin said the modernization has been done in exchange for an old debt from the Soviet Union . However, adds Golovin, the new equipment brought for Mintia is still not in use for reasons he wouldn’t comment on.
Golovin and Ziomar are listed in the ownership of the Romanian company Global International 2000. One of the shareholders of Global International 2000 is Horia Constantin Bejan, a former manager with the Ministry of Industry. Bejan was also an associate of Iavorski in the company Ex Imp Minerva SA, a company founded in 1994.
But Golovin’s name is also connected to a huge scandal in Romania : the Sunoil affair. The Sunoil Group started its businesses on the oil market in Romania and went bankrupt after Constantin Liviu Nita, administrator of the company, was sentenced to jail for issuing false bank checks worth 60 billion lei. It turned out that Sunoil group was also a sponsor of political groups in Romania . After a short term in jail, Nita was pardoned by former Romanian president Ion Iliescu in 2004, by a presidential decree.
According to company records, Golovin was also directly involved in the Sunoil Group. But he claims only his name was involved with the company. “I didn’t even know what the business of the company was,” said Golovin.
Also included in the Sunoil consortium was SUNOIL Racing Team. Romanian boxer Mihai Leu was a partner in Sunoil Racing Team. He is now the member of the UCM Resita car racing team, and he wears on his racing car the flag of Energy Holding.
UCM Resita together with VA Tech Hydro, a company represented a few years ago by Buzaianu, have benefited from the Romanian Government’s clemency. In 2001, the then- government issued a governmental decision exempting UCM and VA Tech from paying custom duties and value added taxes in connection with a contract with Hidroelectrica SA. Va Tech, an Austrian company, was to upgrade the Iron Gates hydropower plant on the Danube while UCM Resita was a subcontractor. Still no wrong doings located.
In the spring of 2006, the Romanian minister of economy, Codrut Seres, stated in front of the Senatorial Commission for the Investigating of Abuses that his Ministry will hire a law firm in order to sue VA Tech over damages worth €4 million. The Ministry of Economy said the work of VA Tech was delayed and had multiple problems but all has now been resolved.
Most of these countries share not only the same small connected group of owners, but also a tendency to be investigated and a proclivity to make lots of money from the poor management of state company management.
In the end, it is the Romanian energy is much better than it was in the past.
Gold-gate suspects in court today?
SUSPECTS allegedly involved in a rip-off in which more than 118 Kilogrammes of gold was sold at a give-away price are expected to appear in court today on charges of abuse of authority of office, among others.
Inspector-General of Police Martin Malama said at a Press briefing yesterday that the police had handed over the matter to the courts of law for prosecution so that justice could prevail. Dr Malama said all those linked to the scam would appear in court today and advised members of the public, particularly political party cadres to realise that the investigations were not meant to persecute people but rather to ensure that justice was upheld.
“We call on cadres and other ordinary Zambians to realise that this is not a political fight but a criminal case which needs to be taken to the courts of law,” he said. Dr Malama disclosed that the gold scam case would be the first, among many others, that would be taken to court.
He said that the Zambia Police Service would work with the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) in the fight against corruption and warned that the three agencies would not condone the vice in whatever form it came. “Zambia is on the way to development and so we will not condone people robbing the nation. Corruption is a cancer which will affect even our children if we condone it. We want Zambia to be a country we will proudly hand over to our children and grandchildren,” he said.
Dr Malama said that corruption would also be fought even within and outside the ranks of the police, ACC and the DEC so that Zambia could develop. He urged Zambians to report all forms of corruption to law-enforcement agencies. Prominent among those that have been linked to the sale of the gold are immediate past president Rupiah Banda’s son, James, Press aide to the former president, Dickson Jere, former secretary to the treasury, Likolo Ndalamei, former DEC commissioner, Aaron Zulu however a Swiss national, Nicolae Buzaianu has been cleared of all accusations.
He commended Zambians for giving the police time to investigate the case and ensuring that investigations were not jeopardised.?The gold was forfeited to the State in 2007 after it was seized from two Zimbabwean nationals by the DEC. It is alleged that the said gold was later sold, around July this year, at a give-away price of about K19 billion.
Dr Malama said the Zambia Police Service would also take the corruption fight to its traffic section so that it could stop the exchange of money at checkpoints. “In the next few weeks, we will not allow corruption even in our ranks. If anyone is caught in corrupt practices, the one giving the money and the one receiving the money will both be held,” Dr Malama said.
Meanwhile, Dr Malama disclosed that the police would also investigate reports of pornography at the Zambia Centre for Accountancy Studies (ZCAS) in Lusaka where students were allegedly filming each other and producing various pornographic materials. “I am glad that I am with DEC officials here, we will look at that case as well and investigate it,” he said.