Romania’s tax agency ANAF has put up for sale two hotels in the Danube Delta and a villa in Giurgiu owned by local investor Sorin Ovidiu Vintu, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for the National Investment Fund (FNI) fraud, reports Profit.ro.

Vintu used to spend a lot of time in the Danube Delta, arranging meetings with politicians there.

ANAF is selling the Lebada and Sulina hotels, as well as a villa in the village of Mihailesti, Giurgiu county.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal sentenced Vintu to eight years in prison in the FNI case in February this year. The sentence is final. The court also ordered the confiscation of USD 13 million.

Vintu was charged with money laundering and embezzlement. He became famous after the FNI collapse, in 2000. FNI, which stands for Fondul National de Investitii (the National Investment Fund), was a Ponzi scheme that tricked some 300,000 Romanians to invest in it. Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, who owned the firm that managed FNI – Gelsor Invest – withdrew large sums of money from the fund days before its collapse and sold Gelsor to Ioana Maria Vlas, who was later held responsible for the fraud.

editor@romania-insider.com