Leaders of Maramures child slavery ring had police, local administration accomplices (sources)

The leaders of the Maramures ring that brought young Germans to Romania under the guise of a re-education program had accomplices in the police, the mayoralty and social assistance service, who tipped them off about upcoming checks, judicial sources told AGERPRES. 

Prosecutors with the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) suspect that the leaders of the group headed by a German citizen and his wife have secured the complicity of members of the local authorities (police, mayoralty, social assistance service), who facilitated their access to information about the periodic checks and controls performed by the Maramures Social Assistance and Child Protection General Directorate. 

According to the cited sources, whenever such inspections were being conducted, the children were sedated and were never left alone with the social assistance inspectors. 

The teens were also kept under strict supervision to prevent them from getting in contact with visiting officials from Germany. 

According to the cited sources, the group was established in 2014 by Schumann Bert Sieghard and his wife Schumann Babett, together with Romanian citizen Vasile Nasui, aka "Netu", with the purported mission of bringing to Romania, for social rehabilitation and reintegration, German teenagers with antisocial behavior and reluctant to social integration; the youth hailed mainly from disorganized families (divorced, drug-addicted or alcoholic parents) or had turned emotionally unstable due to serious illnesses (depression, psychosis, drug addiction) and exhibited disorderly behaviors. 

The children were taken into custody by the German state and were then entrusted to the "Projekt Maramures" social service ran by Schumann Bert Sieghard and having the Baia Mare-based Esperando Association as accredited provider.