Remat Calarasi, the purchaser of the scrap sold by the Romanian railway freight operator CFR Marfa at an
undervalued scrap sale,
was reselling the steel at double the price, according to a report of
the prosecutors from the Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and
Terrorism (DIICOT), quoted by
News.ro.
Remat bought the steel at EUR 120 per ton and later sold it to
Zalau-based Silcotub at EUR 260 per ton, the prosecutors say in a report
proposing the preventive arrest of 19 former employees of CFR Marfa in
the undervalued scrap sale case.
"The main category of metallic waste targeted by the crime group was
steel. This has an average sale price of EUR 218.90 per ton. Through a
fraudulent tactic of hiding the quantities of steel resulting from
scrapping, the members of the group planned to acquire the price
difference between the sum paid by Remat Calarasi to CFR Marfa (EUR 120
per ton of scrap) and the price with which Remat Calarasi resold the
steel,” the prosecutors say in the report.
The freight cars were sold on the Bucharest Commodities Exchange at a
scrap price, although the metallic residue resulting from the scrapping
of the rolling stock would have fit the price of "obsolete heavy
ferrous scrap” or "special ferrous scrap (steel),” which sell at higher
prices. As such, 49,000 tons of rolling stock were sold at a price of
EUR 120 per ton, while the average price for obsolete heavy ferrous
scrap was of EUR 175.88 per ton, and that of special ferrous scrap
(steel) of EUR 218.90 per ton, the prosecutors say.
The prosecutors found that Tawil Abbas, the representative of Remat
Calarasi, had talks with Alex Tesoi, the representative of Silcotub,
which showed that the results of the commodities exchange auction could
be influenced by not participating in it, which would have resulted in a
price drop.
The same report shows that the CFR Management recommended in a 2014
note taking 2,450 cars out of use, without mentioning how they were to
be made use of. Mihut Craciun, the general manager of CFR Marfa, knew of
the interest Remat Calarasi had in purchasing the cars, the prosecutors
also found.
To implement the contract with Remat, five scrapping commissions were
established at the CFR Marfa area center in Timisoara, according to
DIICOT. They were in charge with dismantling 411 cars that this branch
of the railway freight company was owning. The five commissions scrapped
the cars, but did not mention in the associated reports the quantities
of steel and heavy iron resulting from the scrapping. The prosecutors
also found that some CFR Marfa employees were pressured with the
possibility of getting fired if they did not follow through with filling
the falsified paperwork.
According to the DIICOT prosecutors, although CFR Marfa made an offer
on the commodities exchange to sell a generic quantity of 49,000 tons
of scrap, in the sale contract it closed with Remat it mentioned the
sale of scrap resulting from dismantling 2,450 cars.
Mihut Craciun, the former general manager of CFR Marfa, is currently
under preventive arrest, alongside three other directors in the company,
News.ro reported. Craciun was dismissed from his position of general manager of CFR Marfa in December 2016, six months after taking over the job.
(www.romania-insider.com,
)