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10. 09. 10. - 14:00

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10. 09. 10. - 14:00

Romanian TV boss arrested

Romanian Times

The owner of TV channel Realitatea TV, Sorin Ovidiu Vintu, and two other people have been put under preventive arrest for 29 days.

The Prosecutor's Office from the High Court of Justice in Bucharest said Sorin Ovidiu Vintu, Octavian Turcan and Alexandru Stoian had been arrested for favoring a convict who was on the run from a 15 year jail sentence and hiding in Indonesia.

Under Romanian law favoring a criminal is punishable by up to 7 years in jail.

Prosecutors said there was evidence that Ovidiu Vintu had sent large sums of money to convicted fraudster Nicolae Popa, so that he could escape a 15-year jail sentence.

Prosecutors say the sums of money were sent to Nicolae Popa at Vintu's request, through bank transfers, from a bank in Nicosia, Ciprus, to a company in Indonesia. Popa had access to the money through Octavian Turcan or received the money in cash from Alexandru Stoian, prosecutors said.

Press reports said Popa asked Sorin Ovidiu Vintu to send 200,000 euros every year, while hiding in Indonesia.

Popa, sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Bucharest court in 2006 for defrauding more than 100,000 people in a massive Ponzi scheme, was arrested on 2 December 2009 by police in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Popa, a former manager at the firm Gelsor, was sentenced to prison along with Ioana Maria Vlas in the case of the collapse of the National Investment Fund (FNI).

Launched under the slogan "Sleep in peace, FNI is watching over your money!", FNI proved to be a fraudulent financial institution, the collapse of which was officially announced on 25 May 2000.

Over 100,000 people lost the money they had invested at FNI, and the Romanian state, which had guaranteed their investments, paid them compensation of over 100 million Euros.

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