The Bucharest Court of Appeal sentenced Mihai Necolaiciuc, the former general manager of Romania’s railways company CFR, to eight years in prison for abuse of office.

The sentence is final, and is lower than the one ruled by Bucharest’s District 1 Court last June. Necolaiciuc will be incarcerated and serve the sentence in a local prison.

In the same case, Viorica Olaeru, a former director of CFR's Economic Department, got a sentence of five years and six months in prison for complicity to abuse of office, reports local News.ro. Other former directors within CFR and the managers of some private companies that had contracts with CFR were also sentenced to prison.

Necolaiciuc and the other defendants were accused of defrauding the state company. They damaged the company with some EUR 57 million through illegal acquisition contracts. Based on these contracts, CFR paid for goods and services that were never actually delivered or were bad quality and the company never used them.

Mihai Necolaiciuc was the director of CFR from 2000 until 2004. In October 2014, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for fraud. He was released on parole after only nine months, in July 2015.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com