A "gang" of underground people, members of the Democratic-Liberal Party (PD-L) and business people have formed a "gang" that made vanish about 730,000 euro from the Youth and Sports Ministry, according to a new investigative report by Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor. The paper writes on Thursday that a major case in which the Ministry paid money to "buy news" in minister Monica Iacob-Ridzi's advantage was all wrong from the very beginning.
Monica Iacob Ridzi resigned as Youth and Sports minister as she has come under investigation following a series of investigative reports showing that the ministry chose two connected firms to spend some 730,000 euro to promote the minister and President Traian Basescu's daughter, then a candidate for the European Parliament, in the media.
The reports so far said the money was spent for advertising a series of events in early May, but also to buy news on TV stations, which is an abuse. They also showed that the money was attributed to two firms based on a selection of offers.
Today, Gazeta Sporturilor reports that initially the money was attributed directly to the two firms, which is illegal for a state institution. And it reads that people from the Ministry and companies hurried up to turn this direct attribution of contracts into a "selection of offers", but left tracks behind, which came to light during parliamentary inquiries into the case.
And the paper reports that according to sources a firm belonging to an underworld individual had some part in the affair, but things have yet to be clarified in this regard. A "gang" of underground people, members of the Democratic-Liberal Party (PD-L) and business people have formed a "gang" that made vanish about 730,000 euro from the Youth and Sports Ministry, according to a new investigative report by Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor
