* Liviu Luca arrested together with Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu
* The damages caused are estimated at 83 million Euros
Liviu Luca and Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu were arrested yesterday for 24 hours, by prosecutors who will request their preventive arrest for embezzling funds from Petrom Service SA and money laundering, with the prejudice being estimated at more than 83 million Euros, which affected 72,000 members of the Association of Employees, who were deprived of dividends they would have received from the company, due to the fraudulent activities intended to reduce the value of the shares. Also arrested in connection with this case was businessman Octavian Ţurcan, with the judges expected to decide today whether the three defendants will be detained for 29 days.
According to the evidence presented so far, the controlled bankruptcy of Petrom Service S.A. has indirectly led to a loss of approximately 98 million Euros for the consolidated budget of the states.
Basically, through successive operations performed through several offshore companies, money belonging to Petrom Service S.A., was transferred to the personal or corporate accounts of several companies registered in Romania or abroad, in particular S.C. Realitatea Media S.A. (14,200,000 Euros), S.C. Imobiliar Network 2002 S.A. (6,725,000 Euro) and S.C. GM Invest S.A. (1,300,000 Euros).
Thus a significant chunk of the money belonging to Petrom Service were used to finance the media structures owned by Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, as the unionists "sponsored" in such a manner countless deontologists, who can only be accused from a moral standpoint of not having had the curiosity to perform a serious investigation on this subject. There is also information that several journalists will also be summoned to appear before the prosecutors to issue statements pertaining to this case. Petrom Service, which