Bloomberg: Harvard selling Romanian forest land amid agent bribery case

Newsroom 14/02/2014 | 09:06

Harvard University is selling forest land in Romania amid revelations that an agent it hired to help make the investment was arrested for taking bribes, writes Bloomberg.

Scolopax, a company controlled by the university, has advertised 32,465 hectares of timberland for about RON 383 million ( USD 116 million), according to an announcement published at a town hall in the eastern Romanian county of Vrancea.

Kevin Galvin, a spokesman for Harvard, said the university is in the middle of a transaction that began before Romanian authorities arrested Dragos Lipan Secu in January. Lipan Secu, who represented Scolopax, was charged with taking more than $1 million in bribes to induce the university to buy forests at inflated prices.

“This transaction is part of a process that started in November of 2013,” Galvin said in an e-mail. “The transaction does not affect our commitment in Romania, but because of the ongoing transaction process, we are not in a position to comment any further on this matter.”

According to a 2011 report from Ziarul Financiar, Harvard, the world’s richest university with USD 32.7 billion, is the largest owner of forests in Romania after the State, controlling 35.000 hectares which it purchased through Scolopax. The Brasov company is owned by Harvard through an investment entity called Phemus Corp and it has assets worth USD 126 million.

Lipan Secu, managing director for Scolopax,  was charged with collecting bribes worth RON 4.45 million between 2007 and 2009 to artificially boost prices, however it is not known how much Scolopax overpaid for the lands. He and his wife were arrested for complicity and are facing more than 10 years in jail.

The university has been increasing investments in natural resources in foreign countries, including timberlands that are farmed for paper and wood products. Jane Mendillo, president and chief executive officer of Harvard Management, began exploring timberland as an investment in the 1990s when she was a vice president. New Zealand and Brasil are some of the other regions where Harvard has purchased forest land.

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