About USD 108 billion have been stolen in Romania in the last 25 years, according to Digi 24 news station. This sum represents public money and assets that have been illegally transferred to private companies and individuals via all sorts of schemes, including bad privatizations or overpriced public acquisition contracts.

The USD 108 billion level is only an estimate calculated following a series of journalistic investigations that Digi 24 has broadcasted in the past 18 months as part of the series Romania Furata (Stolen Romania).

“Simple math shows that had this money been invested only in infrastructure projects, Romania could have built hundreds of hospitals, tens of thousands of highway kilometers and hundreds of thousands of houses,” said Oana Despa, the series coordinator, quoted by Digi24.ro.

In most of the presented cases, the whole damage has been impossible to calculate, as they had domino effects throughout the economy.

editor@romania-insider.com