What the newspapers say: September 15, 2010 

The Health system is on the verge of collapse, one newspaper reads on Wednesday. Elsewhere in the news, one newspaper reconstructs the money circuit put in place by media mogul Sorin Ovidiu Vantu. Last but not least, find out what Bulgarians have and Romanians are missing.

Gandul reads on Wednesday that the Romanian Health system is on the verge of collapse: half of the doctors in Romania will eventually leave abroad, medicine is missing from hospitals and doctors and nurses have lower salaries.

On top of all this, the Health ministry submitted a draft for public debate where hospitals in Romania are classified in five categories and among the criteria are: the number of beds, the level of technical equipment, the medical personnel and their education level and type of services offered.

According to the draft project, hospitals will be of five categories. Those hospitals with a general specialization need to have 500 to 1500 beds, to supply all types of medical services, to function as clinics for education and research and to be able to serve 1.5 to 3.5 million people.

Those with a limited specialization will be hospitals that offer care for chronic diseases or those that have just one specialization. According to officials, those with a complete specialization will receive more money than the latter.

Opinions vary: there are hospital directors who agree with the classification on grounds that some hospitals need more money than others while others are dissatisfied with the classification based on the number of beds on grounds that hospitals cannot reject patients just because there are no beds.

Evenimentul zilei reconstructs the money circuit set up by media mogul Sorin Ovidiu Vantu for Romanian Nicolae Popa who escaped the country to avoid a 15 years sentence. The newspaper reads that the money sent to Popa came from the businesses with labor union members of Liviu Luca, in the shadow of Petrom, the oil company.

The offshore account of the company Comac Ltd. from Nicosia, Cyprus controlled by Vantu was capitalized in 2003-2007 when Vantu and Liviu Luca made a fortune ensuring that Petrom works.

According to the newspaper, the financial circuit was made by Vantu but Liviu Luca executed it. Comac ltd was paid through Petrom for management services which are hard to quantify. For example, Rompetrol service reported a 407 million dollars gain. After all contracts were paid, including the management one, Petromservice was left with a profit of 26.4 million dollars.

The same happened for other companies set up by PAS Petrom. Prosecutors declared that Vantu made the decision to send the money through Octavian Tucan from Comac accounts to a company in Indonesia where Popa had access.

Comac ltd, according to the newspaper is a nonresident company in Cyprus and pays no taxes because Cyprus has the best taxing regime in the EU with 0% taxes for nonresident companies. Comac ltd has two directors: Octavian Turcan and Ghenadie Nipo.

What Bulgarians have and Romanians are missing is a German engineer to coordinate infrastructure projects, Romania libera reads. The newspaper reads that his counterparts in Romania are people specialized in anything else than infrastructure and the results are clear: Bulgarians have 450 km of highway while we have only 300 km even though Romania is twice as big as Bulgaria.

Even though Bulgaria has a GDP three times smaller than in Romania, it managed to build from 2005-2008 more km of highway than Romania build in the same period. Moreover, Bulgarians pay half of the price Romanians pay for 1 km build.

The German engineer is 67 years old and has been leading the agency in charge with infrastructure for two years now.

The reshuffling of the agency’s leadership, new Transports minister and government reshuffling did not replace him.

What is more, the five directors of the agency have all been, at their origin highway and road engineers unlike their Romanian counterparts.