Prosecutors undecided in Steaua owner’s case

Prosecutors gave no verdict in a case related to the owner of Bucharest-based football club Steaua, involving land exchanges between him and the Defence Ministry (MApN).

An MApN spokesman clarified that the lack of a decision did not mean that the criminal investigation against Steaua owner Gigi Becali in this case was abandoned, as Becali stated following hearings on Thursday.

Gigi Becali owns the football club Steaua, a team that has reached the quarter-finals of UEFA Cup 2006 and is due to face another Romanian team, Rapid, on March 30 and April 6.

The case involves an exchange of two land plots between Becali and the MApN in 1999 that would have been carried out illegally following a transfer from state’s property into private property.