Romanian businessman known as the “copper banker” arrested in overvalued retrocessions case
Romania’s anticorruption prosecutors arrested local businessman Horia Simu on Thursday night, after searching his house and questioning him for about an hour, according to judicial sources.
Simu became known as the “copper banker” after leaving Citibank Romania, where he was a vice-president, to create the biggest copper business in Romania, based on privatized state assets. His copper group, Cuprom, went into insolvency in 2008.
The anticorruption prosecutors charged Simu with complicity to abuse of office in a case that’s centered on illegal retrocessions. The prosecutors alleged that Horia Simu received an unjustifiably high compensation from Romania’s National Authority for Property Restitution (ANRP) for a 10-hectare land in Bucharest.
According to the prosecutors, the value of the land was artificially increased in the expert’s evaluation and that Simu received EUR 55 million more in compensations than the land was actually worth.
Horia Simu received the second largest state compensation for assets nationalized by the communist regime from ANRP. He got the equivalent of RON 467 million (some EUR 105 million at today’s exchange rate) in Fondul Proprietatea shares.
The former president and vice-president of the restitutions authority, Ingrid Zaarour and Theodor Nicolescu, and two other ANRP members who were part of the committee that granted Simu the compensation are also investigated in this case.
According to a report by Romania’s Court of Accounts, published in 2013, Horia Simu wasn’t the the initial owner or inheritor of the land for which he got compensated. He had bought the litigious rights on this asset from their original owner for some USD 1.5 million, the report showed.
Horia Simu invested some of the money he gained from this profitable business into art and jewelry. The prosecutors seized some 150 paintings by famous Romanian artists, as well as expensive watches and jewelry they found at his house, according to judicial sources quoted by Mediafax.
The case against Simu is the second one targeting overvalued property restitutions. Last year, several members of ANRP’s committee that approved the compensations were arrested for having paid EUR 89.4 million to local businessman Stelian Gheorghe for a land plot that was only worth EUR 27 million, thus damaging the state budget by over EUR 60 million. Among those arrested in that case was former anti-organized crime chief prosecutor Alina Bica, who had been a member of ANRP’s committee that granted this compensation.
Romanian Organized Crime Chief Prosecutor arrested for corruption
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