The Ploiești Court of Appeal ordered the retrial of the businessman’s tax evasion and money laundering case Gimi Palada from Prahova and the company Cast Banesti, controlled by him through a relative, according to the court portal. CA Ploiești took the retrial decision in March this year.
According to the reasoning published on the rejust.ro portal, it is the 3rd time in 8 years of trials that the court of judicial review annuls the sentence of the trial court and orders the retrial of the file for the same reason: the Prahova Court would not have effectively analyzed the file and would not have given reasons for the sentence on all aspects of the case.
Meanwhile, the money laundering charge has become time-barred, even prosecutors have admitted, and the tax evasion charge depends on the courts’ willingness to enforce the EU Court of Justice ruling on the statute of limitations.
The businessman Gimi Paladă was sent to court in March 2016 by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Ploiești Court of Appeal. He was indicted for tax evasion of 4.7 million lei (almost 1 million euros) and money laundering of 3.5 million lei. Later, a financial-accounting expert report established that the damage would be only 1.8 million lei (over 350,000 euros).
He paid the damage in full as early as February 2016 and requested the trial in simplified procedure. He partially admitted the facts, but claimed that he was forced to withdraw money from the company and bribe the Cosma clan from Prahova, through Răzvan Alexe, a former underworld, the family’s right-hand man.
Context. It should be noted that this year the PNL-PSD amendments to the tax evasion law came into force, according to which the evasion of less than one million euros is exempted if the damage has been paid.
The evasion case of Gimi Paladă has been tried for 8 years in the courts and is in the fourth retrial, but the Alexe-Păvăleanu case regarding tax evasion of 30 million euros has been tried for over 10 years at the Prahova Court, without even reaching at least to a verdict in the first instance.
Who is businessman Gimi Paladă: He denounced the Cosma family
Paladă denounced Mircea Cosma, former PSD president of CJ Prahova, and his son, Vlad Cosma, ex-PSD deputy, to the Ploiești DNA. Based on the denunciation of Paladă and other businessmen from Prahova, DNA Ploiești investigated the corruption case of the Cosma family in which the former PSD baron and his former deputy son were accused of having received a bribe of 1 million dollars, representing commissions from asphalting and snow removal contracts awarded to client companies.
In January 2024, the Ploiești Court of Appeal terminated the criminal trial as a result of the intervention of the prescription after not taking into account the decisions of the EU Court of Justice regarding the prescription. In the first instance, in 2016, Mircea Cosma was sentenced to 8 years in prison, and his son to 5 years in prison.
Timeline with the history of Gimi Paladă’s evasion and money laundering case
March 2016: Gimi Costin Paladă and his company, Cast Bănești, were sent to court for tax evasion and money laundering. The damage of more than 350 thousand euros was fully paid by the defendant, who partially admitted the facts and requested a trial in a simplified procedure.
June 2016: The Prahova Court sentenced Paladă to 3 years of suspended imprisonment and the CAST company to a criminal fine of 250,000 lei.
In the same year, the Ploiești Court of Appeal ordered the retrial of the case for the first time. “The court found that the judge of the case settled the case in violation of the obligation to give reasons”, the CA of Ploiești justified the retrial decision from 2016.
March 2017: The Prahova Court has started the retrial of the case.
April 2018: The Prahova court issued a new verdict.
July 2019: CA Ploiești ordered the second retrial decision. The reason: the judge at the Prahova Court would have copy-pasted from previous documents, without thoroughly analyzing the case.
“The court found that the only contribution of the first-instance judge in drafting the reasons for the decision was limited to taking over the previous court decisions pronounced in the case, without analyzing based on a legal reasoning what are the arguments that impose the solution he opted for, elements that are likely to indicate the lack of an effective judgment of the case, which cannot be supplemented by the court of appeal as it would lead to the defendants being deprived of a degree of jurisdiction.
The Court assessed that this situation creates a disproportionate restriction of the right to a fair trial that cannot be compensated by the analysis of the court of judicial review”, the CA Ploiești showed.
September 2019: The Prahova court started the second retrial of the case.
October 2023: The Prahova court issued a 3rd verdict in the file in which, this time, it found that the tax evasion had expired and ordered an acquittal for money laundering on the grounds that the predicate offense was missing (the defendants could not have laundered money dirty since the crime of tax evasion no longer exists because it is time-barred).
The Prahova court rejected the imputability clause invoked by the defendants, that they were threatened and forced to withdraw money from the company, through tax evasion, in order to bribe the Cosma family.
How the businessmen were forced to pay bribes to the Cosma family
The court analyzed the testimonies of some employees of the Cast Bănești company regarding how they were allegedly threatened and forced by Răzvan Alexe, the right-hand man of the Cosma family, to give them bribes.
<< p>
Thus, with regard to the witness (…), in essence, it was noted that he declared:
“I know that these commissions were in fact a disguised bribe for the Prahova County Council, the intermediary being Alexe Răzvan who, although I have not met him personally, I knew was mediating this relationship.
But I was contacted by phone by this person who initially presented himself as a county councilor and the one who was in charge of all the works contracted by the Prahova County Council. He also told me that he is the person who decides and that I must comply with what he said.
Alexe Răzvan would call me and tell me in which town to go to perform works under the contract, if they were urgent.
I remember that he always regarded everything as very urgent and that other works had to be abandoned in order to carry out the tasks in connection with which I was called.
There were times when, if we didn’t exactly meet the deadlines set by him, he became aggressive, threatening with regard to commercial relations or that he would change my position because he is the head of these contracts.
Yes, I always informed those in the commercial company about these pressures, but because I needed a good relationship with those in the County Council, as I had completed and unpaid work and needed other work for the company’s survival, it was accepted .
Not directly, but I suspected and heard that other people from the management of the company were also pressured.
As I mentioned, I only perceived a general state that was felt at the level of society and not a specific moment in time in which he participated directly”, said one of the witnesses, according to the cited document.
Another witness told the court: “I worked at SC Cast in (…) I had the position of technical director. All the execution works were under my supervision, I did not draw up the documents, but only supervised the execution of the work from a technical point of view.
Regarding the two companies, during (…), on the initiative of Alexe Răzvan, we agreed to meet. Basically I was contacted by phone. I went to his office in the Tătărani area….
During the meeting, Mr. Alexe presented me with a centralizing table with sums of money and names of commercial companies, which he said represented the debts of some commercial companies to him and the party.
The amount of 700,000 Ron was transferred to the Cast company, in his view, this amount was his (….) debt to him and the party.
It seemed to me that, in a threatening tone, he informed me that if we do not pay this debt we will not collect the value of the works from the County Council and we will not win any more tenders.
I knew that Alexe is a man with relationships at the level of (…)
I went back to the collective management of the company, I explained the discussion and the management of the company decided to accept this proposal because there would have been more serious consequences: bankruptcy, personal dismissal, non-payment of suppliers.
In the year (…) was the second meeting, we had executed a bridge in (…), about 70 percent. I prepared statements of works and accounting documents and submitted them to the Prahova County Council to the site manager (…).
The latter informed me that the work estimates will not be signed until I contact Alexe Răzvan…
I personally spoke with Alexe in the same location and this time he was more threatening, also on the subject of paying debts to himself and the party. I didn’t ask for any more explanation.
After this meeting, we went again to the collective management of the company, informed them and came to the conclusion that we have to give this money to avoid bankruptcy and the dismissal of the staff (…)>>, it is stated in the reasoning of CA Ploiești.
NOTE: Anonymizations belong to the court.
However, the court concluded that these threats and coercions do not justify committing the crime of tax evasion.
“It was possible to resort to other means, even denunciation, as was done later, to recover the amounts owed through legal means, to refuse to carry out works with funding from the state budget, but the defendants accepted the proposed situation, they continued over time and looked for illicit ways to cover these amounts transferred to the account of a company that they knew would not perform any of the works established in the contract. The simple invocation of the relationships available to the person who requested the sums of money categorically contradicts the defense of the defendants according to which they would have committed the act based on moral coercion”, concluded the Prahova Court in the third verdict.
The prosecutors filed an appeal and asked the court to apply the CJEU’s decision on the statute of limitations and to find that the facts of tax evasion are not statute-barred. Regarding the crime of money laundering, the prosecutors admitted that the act was time-barred, but requested the recovery of the damage (which could not be recovered if the acquittal was ordered).
March 2024: CA Ploiești ordered the third retrial of the case. The reason this time as well: the lack of an effective judgment by the Prahova Court and the lack of a justification covering all aspects of the case.
All these elements are likely to indicate the lack of an effective judgment of the case, which cannot be replaced by the court of appeal as it would lead to the defendants being deprived of a degree of jurisdiction.
Thus, this situation creates a disproportionate restriction of the right to a fair trial that cannot be compensated by the analysis of the court of judicial control”, concluded the Ploiești Court of Appeal in the third decision to re-judge the case.
Tags: evasion case whistleblowers Cosma family Prahova retried fourth time Prahova court analyzed case times row years passed accused expired
-
