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It is now official. Tăriceanu, Stolojan and Geoană will fight for the prime minister position, striving to be the engines of PNL, PD-L and PSD in the next Parliament elections.  This comes as no surprise, as during the last months they have been insistently present in the media as political leaders with best chances of becoming prime ministers.

Something else is surprising. All three are connected, directly or indirectly, by the author of the biggest bank frauds, the controversial character Paul Petre Ţârdea. In between 2002 and 2003, Ţârdea was the leader of the network which rifled three banks, the total fraud rising to 2,700 billion lei, approximately 1 billion dollars. His victims were BCR, RIB and Banca Românească, which gave loans to the network exceeding the limits stipulated in the legislation and internal regulations. This became the subject of a huge investigation of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate.  Yet more surprising is the way in which an unknown character like Paul Petre Ţârdea succeeded in penetrating the bank systems, right after the big bank bankruptcies of Bancorex, Bankcoop, BPR, Banca Turco-Română.

It seems unconceivable that less than two years after these scandals, somebody succeeds in realizing one of the biggest frauds in the history of the Romanian bank systems,  even bigger than that of the PSD MP  Gabriel Bivolaru.

Paul Petre Ţârdea is not known by the public, but famous in certain political media.

In 1994, he was the  main actor in the privatization of Marmura SA Bucureşti.  Through Minola, Ţârdea takes over from FPS the marble company Marmura SA Bucharest. Târdea’s associate in Minola was Mircea Geoană’s brother in law, financer Ionuţ Costea.

After taking over from the state Marmura Bucureşti, Ţârdea and Costea sell it, during the SAFI scandal, to the investment fund belonging to Cataramă, Tăriceanu, Chiliman, Basgan and other PNL members. It was a very strange deal, as the legal norms provided that a fund could not have more than 10% in another issuer. But  with Costel and Ţârdea’s help, SAFI took over 82% from Marmura SA. After the deal with SAFI, both Ionuţ Costea and Paul Petre Ţârdea bug out from Minola.

One year later, we find Ţârdea in the Bankcoop scandal, being charged together with the president of the bank, fugitive Alexandru Dinulescu. After 2000, Ţârdea took part in the business meetings as being the Counsellor of Nastase Cabinet. In 2003, his name appeared again in one of the biggest fraud in the history of Romanian banks,  known under the name of the robbery at BCR Novaci, a subsidiary of the biggest Romanian banks. The subsidiary had given loans of over 700 billion to Ţârdea’s group, which was over the limit of the bank internal regulations.

After that, the prosecutors noticed that the group had prejudiced other banks too, the bank fraud reaching over 2,700 billion lei, in 2003.

This was no reason for which Paul Petre Ţârdea could not be nominated by Theodor Stolojan as the first on the PNL list for the Parliament elections in 2004, in Gorj county, the same county of BCR Novaci. His nomination was retired in August 2004, in exchange of Viorel Cataramă’s retirement from the list for Parliament. Thus, two of the actors of  SAFI-MINOLA-MARMURA deal have lost the chance of becoming MPs.

In 2004, Ţârdea becomes partner with one of SAFI founders, Ion Basgan. Basgan, which was a PNL senator at the time,  was one of the richest politicians and one of the most famous masons in Romania – founder of SAFI,  Banca Româneasca and Libra Bank.

It is still a mystery the was in which Ţârdea was co-author in big bank frauds on one hand and partner with Mircea Geoană’s brother in law, on the other hand. From the partner position, he helps Tăriceanu, Cataramă, Chiliman, in the SAFI deal, and in 2007, becomes one of the PDL supporters. (Gabriel Pârvu)