Daniel Tudor, who was in charge of regulating and supervising Romania’s insurance sector from October 2012 until October 2013, was held by the anticorruption prosecutors on Thursday, February 18, on bribery charges.

The National Anticorruption Directorate – DNA prosecuted Tudor for taking a EUR 300,000 bribe from a local businessman to ignore the negative results of a control carried by the supervisory authority at an insurance company owned by the respective businessman.

The insurance company apparently was Carpatica Asig, which is owned by local investor Ilie Carabulea, according to Mediafax.

Tudor allegedly received the money through his wife, Doina Anca Tudor, who is a senator in Romania’s Parliament. The DNA prosecutors have asked the Senate to waive Doina Tudor’s immunity and allow them to prosecute and arrest her for complicity to bribery.

Daniel Tudor initially asked the businessman to pay him EUR 3 million to close his eyes to the irregularities found at the respective insurance company, but later settled for EUR 300,000, which he received in three tranches.

The control report showed that the company had a high operational risk. Tudor, who was president of the Insurance Supervisory Commission (CSA) at that time (in April 2013), ignored the report and asked the company to solve some minor issues that were insignificant compared to its poor financial situation, according to DNA.

The Insurance Supervisory Commission was absorbed by the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF) in mid-2013 and Daniel Tudor became ASF’s executive vice president in charge of the insurance sector. He resigned in October 2013 invoking personal reasons.

In early 2014, a huge scandal hit the ASF, as the authority’s president Dan Radu Rusanu was arrested by the DNA for setting up an organized crime group and complicity to abuse of office. More precisely, Rusanu was accused of having favored the insurance company Carpatica Asig, owned by Ilie Carabulea, by taking the prerogatives to decide himself which insurance companies would be controlled and in what terms, thus stepping over the authority of the ASF vice president in charge of the insurance sector (who at that time was Daniel Tudor).

Moreover, one of the accusations against Rusanu was that he initiated a law to change the structure of the ASF board and the criteria the board members needed to fulfill. The new rules forced Daniel Tudor’s resignation, as he didn’t fulfill the criteria to remain ASF vice president. The DNA prosecutors alleged that Rusanu did all this to help Carpatica Asig. Former Finance Minister Daniel Chitoiu was also prosecuted in Rusanu’s case for helping him change the legislation related to ASF’s board members.

Carpatica Asig’s owner, Ilie Carabulea, was also arrested in early 2014 for bribing the ASF officials to close their eyes to his company’s problems. He was helped by Marian Mirzac, a former general manager of Carpatica Asig, who became a non-executive member of the ASF board in 2013. Mirzac was also arrested.

Carpatica Asig, which is one of the top 10 insurance companies in Romania and one of the top three insurers on the auto liability (RCA) segment, has had big financial problems in recent years. The ASF recently decided to take control of the company under a resolution mechanism, which allows the authority to step over the shareholders’ will and find an investor to take over the company.

Another big Romanian insurer, Astra Asigurari – the market leader in 2013, went bankrupt last year after the CSA and the ASF had closed their eyes to the company’s financial problems for years.

editor@romania-insider.com