Bucharest court of appeal will rule prosecutors’ demand for preventive arrest of Rompetrol‘s CEO Dinu Patriciu on March 10, after the regular court rejected last Friday the demand on procedural grounds. The prosecutors also want arrested two other top managers of the company. Patriciu said recently that he gave up any managerial position within the group’s companies in Romania but he remains CEO of Dutch-registered Rompetrol NV – the company that owns the whole group and where Patriciu controls 80% of the shares.
Speaking of the procedures, Evenimentul Zilei explains that the prosecutors attempted to reject the judge appointed in this case on grounds that the judge herself gave Patriciu full access to the whole file – in other words to the prosecutors’ investigations over other persons indicted in the case. The demand was rejected by court.
Regarding the case itself, Gandul daily unveils several details quoted from the prosecution file which allegedly demonstrate that Patriciu and two top managers manipulated the market the day the shares of Petromidia refinery were listed. The prosecutors reportedly hold evidence regarding cooperation among the members of the group manipulating the price. One Cyprus-based fund controlled by Rompetrol top manager Collin Hart and two politically-connected investors [Camelia Voiculescu and Sorin Pantis] were reportedly involved in the manipulation. The market manipulation was not penalized by the Securities Commission and this was due to the complicity of two members of this body, prosecutors claim. The operations were carried through brokerage house that have cooperated with the manipulators, the prosecutors imply.