OBSERVER - December 10th 2004 This year nine football clubs in Divizia A (the Romanian First Division) have been fined by the Office for the Workforce Migration (OWM) because they owned foreign sportsmen which didnât have work permits in Romania.
By CRISTIAN PETRU
INVASION. Nigerian Abiodun, from FC National, is one of the tens of foreign players in Divizia A. OWM presented its activity report for this year yesterday. The office is the public institution having the competence of remitting and extending the work permits for the foreign citizens which are to work in Romania. "There were also six foreign citizens who tried cheating on the Romanian state by showing false documents. There were also 44 companies which employed foreigners without obtaining the work permits for Romania", stated Nicoleta Andreescu, the director of the OWM.
IRREGULARITIES. Nine football clubs from Divizia A have been fined in 2004 by the OWM after being discovered as having employed foreign citizens without them having work permits.
The total value of the fines given to the clubs was 750,000,000 lei. "There have been some chairmen who tried to avoid the fines and called us. However, they didnât manage to get out with it. The fines have been contested by some of the clubs", stated Aurel Teodorescu, the deputy director of the OWM, yesterday. Besides fining the foreign employees without work permits, some measures regarding their legal staying in Romania have been taken. For now, the OWM officials refused naming the fined clubs.
GAIN Almost 90,000 Romanians left to work abroad this year. They were helped by the OWM. These 87,893 people earned a total sum of 124,474,600 euros. Most of them chose Germany as destination (36,395), then Spain (26,115). In these three years of activity of the OWM, from 2002 till now, the Romanians who left to
