Final sentence in the wheat-state reserve case from Comcereal Bihor. The former administrator will pay 4 million lei

8 years after he was sent to court, the court decided to terminate the criminal trial because the facts of which Țiț-Andreescu was accused had expired, but forced him to pay over 4 million lei for the wheat destroyed in the silos in Tinca and Batar of society.

The accusations made by the prosecutors

As Jurnal Bihorean and Bihon also reported, Petru Țiț-Andreescu was sent to court, in December 2016, on charges of embezzlement, fraud, forgery in documents under private signature and negligence in service. In the same file, three former subordinates of his, who were his accomplices, were also indicted: the head of Siloz Marghita al Comcereal, Maria Tătar, and the engineers Iosif Kiraly and Leonica Furtos, the first accused of complicity in fraud, and the second of complicity embezzlement and fraud.

Țiț Andreescu was accused that, between 2010 and 2013, he would have appropriated from the management, through embezzlement, approximately 5,000,000 kilograms of wheat – state reserve, stored at Comcereal’s Marghita Silo. The investigators showed that the wheat would have been removed from the cells of the silo, loaded into trucks and delivered to unidentified companies, which would have caused the National Administration of State Reserves and Special Problems a damage calculated at 6.4 million lei.

The former administrator of Comcereal Bihor was also accused of falsifying documents by which he would have collected a rent of 1.7 million lei for the silo in Marghita where part of the wheat – state reserve – was stored.

In addition, between 2007 and 2013, nearly 5,000 tons of wheat – state reserve, stored in the company’s bases in Tinca and Batăr, were destroyed, prosecutors claimed, due to the negligence of Țiț-Andreescu.

With the prescribed deeds, but obliged to pay for the destroyed wheat

In the first instance, in February 2023, the Bihor Court decided to acquit Țiț Andreescu for the charges of embezzlement (there is no evidence that he committed the crime) and fraud (the act is not provided for by the criminal law), but also the termination of the criminal trial for an accusation of false in the documents, on the grounds that the deed is time-barred.

The trial court also ordered the acquittal of the former administrator of Comcereal Bihor for another charge of forgery and for negligence in service, on the grounds that the facts are not provided for by the criminal law. In the case of the latter facts, the Court of Appeal observed that they are also time-barred, so it decided to terminate the process.

Instead, the appeals court partially admitted the civil action of the National Agency of State Reserves and Special Problems and forced Petru Țiț-Andreescu to pay a damage of 4.18 million lei caused by the crime of negligence in the service and in following which thousands of tons of wheat were destroyed.

To cover this damage, the judges upheld the seizure of Tiț Andreescu’s bank accounts, as well as the insurance measures instituted on over 160 lands belonging to the former director of Comcereal Bihor, as well as the money found in his office during a search in 2013 – 1,660 of euros, 60 dollars and 500 lei.

Comcereal, obliged to pay 5.5 million lei

Regarding the accusations against the Comcereal company, the Oradea Court of Appeal upheld the decision taken by the first instance: the termination of the trial for fraudulent management as a result of the statute of limitations and the acquittal for fraud and negligence in the service. However, the amount that Comcereal SA was obliged to pay was reduced from 6.4 million lei to 5.5 million lei for the quantity of “5,013,368 kg of state reserve wheat stored at the Siloz in Marghita found missing on the occasion of handing over management”.

In order to guarantee the payment of the damage, the Court maintained the seizure applied to the company’s bank account and assets, targeting four reception bases in Bihor and more than 20 lands and buildings. Instead, the company no longer has to pay the amount of 900,000 lei, which the Bihor Court calculated as fraudulently collected rent.

The process of complicity in embezzlement, fraud and forgery was definitively stopped in the case of Maria Tătar, the former head of Comcereal’s Marghita silo, who died during the trial, in May 2021. However, the appeal court kept the sequestration on an apartment of hers, some sums of money and a car with a total value of over 130,000 lei.

By Wednesday’s sentence, the engineers Leonica Furtoș and Iosif Kiraly were also definitively acquitted.

The Oradea Court of Appeal also decided to cancel all documents that were forged, among them several minutes of verification of the state reserve wheat stock and its state of preservation.