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Tel Drum SA commercial company and its representatives, business people Petre Pitis and Mircea Visan were prosecuted by the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) prosecutors in the case on European funds defrauding, with over one million-euro damages, informs DNA.
According to DNA, also prosecuted under the same file are WFA Impex joint stock, WFA Impex representative Florian Ion, and Florea Neda, representative of Tel Drum SA, all for complicity in committing the offense of using or presenting, in bad faith, false or inaccurate or incomplete documents or statements when such action results in unfairly obtaining European funds, in aggravated form.
According to the indictment drawn by investigators and sent to judges, in 2015, the Ministry of European Funds accepted for funding a project submitted by the Tel Drum SA company under the programme "Increase of Economic Competitiveness" financed through European funds.
"Under the project, Tel Drum SA was due to acquire a 'mobile asphalt mixer station for increasing the economic competitiveness of SC Tel Drum SA'. The project had to be implemented by 31 December 2015," investigators specify.
The quoted source shows that on 2 September 2015, Tel Drum SA released on www.fonduri-ue.ro website the assets' procurement announcement (the mobile station) and following the carrying out of the contract stages of the asset award tender procedure, WFA Impex SRL was declared the winner and upon the submission of a reimbursement application in February 2016, Tel Drum SA would have received 4,170,462.5 lei worth of European funds, an amount close to the maximum non-repayable funds eligible for such project.
"The indictment shows that, under the project funded through European money, Tel Drum SA representatives - Petre Pitis, Mircea Visan and Neda Florea - broke, on the one hand, the rules regarding the carrying out of the tender procedure of the award contract and on the other hand, cooked the documents that confirmed unreal deeds and circumstances (documents subsequently used in obtaining non-repayable funds), in the sense that they simulated the tender procedure, the Tel Drum SA representatives having had direct negotiations with the supplier regarding the price and the conditions of the acquisition, whereas WFA Impex SRL was just an intermediary on paper in the procedure (this company having neither the experience nor the capacity to utilise the equipment); allegedly provided SC WFA Impex SRL with information on the carrying out of the project, the participation conditions and the technical documentation before the tender announcement was released, thus eliminating the competitive nature of the award procedure and drew up and submitted statements regarding the lack of conflict of interest between the representatives of the beneficiary and the tenderer although WFA Impex SRL was affiliated to Tel Drum SA and Petre Pitis, Neda Florea and Ion Florian had both a professional and personal relation, WFA Impex SRL functioning as a satellite company of Tel Drum SA," the release mentions.
DNA specifies that the Ministry of Regional Development, Public Administration and European Funds (MDRAPFE) launched a civil action in this cause with the 4,849,375-lei amount representing the non-repayable eligible spending.
