The court prolongs arrest for people involved in MediaPro and Mediafax files

Newsroom 19/01/2015 | 14:18

The persons withheld in the MediaPro and Mediafax files in December, under money laundry and fiscal evasion charges, will continue to remain under arrest for another month, after the measure was prolonged by the court, according to Paginademedia,ro.

In the MediaPro file, 11 people charged with fiscal evasion and money laundering were taken into custody in December for a total period of thirty days.

The persons standing charges are Silviu Relu Viju, Cosmin Andrei Ion,former manager in the MediaPro Studios, Eugenia Balan, manager at MediaPro Studios, Andreea-Cornelia Stanculeanu, chief operating officer at Mediapro Studios, Mihai-Valentin Toderiuc, operational manager at MediaPro Studios, Danuț Puiu, Elena-Lucia Adascalitei, MediaPro financial analyst during December 2007- March 2014, Elena Nita, George-Laurentiu Dinu, Elena Calapereanu and Corina Medeleanu, chief financial officer at the MediaPro Studios.

They were withheld in December under suspicion of causing damages to the state budget of approximately RON 6 million in unpaid VAT and profit tax.

According to prosecutors, between 2009- 2014, Silviu Relu Viju, Cosmin Andrei Ion, Eugenia Balan and Corina Medeleanu, who had management positions in three media companies, in complicity with the other defendants, registered in the books of these companies various invoices that were not issued following real acquisitions.

The invoices were allegedly issued by several dummy companies.

“Part of the sums stipulated in the invoices were transferred in the accounts of the companies that issued them (representing bonus for the services provided by these companies, and in some cases the VAT- wherefrom they were withdrawn in cash by their representatives), while for the rest of the sums, fictitious receipts were drafted, but the respective sums were not effectively taken from the accounts of the three media companies. Instead, they were used to additionally pay some employees in these companies,” said the prosecutors.

According to the prosecutors, the money laundered in this way totaled approximately RON 15 million.

In the Mediafax file, three people were taken into custody on December 12.

These were Roxana Grigoruță, Nicolae Sorin Dinu and Dragoș Gheorghe Chis.

 

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, quoted by Paginademedia.ro, “in a decision issued on April 23, 2013, Mediafax Group was granted permission to pay its taxes amounting to RON 3,949,358 over a period of 24 months. The mentioned company, its representatives a well as people from law firms involved in attesting the legality of the documents of this company set up a scheme to avoid the payment of taxes, which included creating dummy companies on the name of people who lacked financial means, profiting from their situation, and these companies were dragged into this commercial circuit.”

In this way, Mediafax Group was protected and the responsibility for paying the taxes was transferred to these other companies. Against these companies, measures were taken to block their accounts for not paying the taxes, but these procedures were useless because they did not own any assets that could be seized to pay the taxes.

Otilia Haraga

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