Nicolae Botgros, a deputy from the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (Romanian: Partidul Acțiune și Solidaritate, PAS), has found himself at the center of a major real estate corruption scandal.
The story dates back to 2007, when the cultural and artistic association “Lăutarii”, headed by the current parliamentarian, was granted a valuable plot of land in the capital near the railway station free of charge.
The state did not allocate the land as a gift but for the construction of an important cultural facility. The project was supposed to include a music school, a recording studio, a museum of winemaking with a wine cellar, and a hotel.
For many years the land remained untouched, as Botgros had little interest in investing in an unprofitable cultural center. The situation changed during the period of Vladimir Plahotniuc. At that time, the government allowed the construction of “residential premises to support young talents” on the allocated plot.
After that, two nine-story apartment blocks and a six-story building appeared on the site. The latter was initially presented as a “social and cultural center.”
However, Botgros’s greed prevailed here as well. Instead of the promised cultural center, another apartment building with 20 flats, worth about €1.2 million, was constructed. The apartments were sold to people who were generally far removed from the arts.
What stands out in this story is not the fact of large-scale and blatant corruption. There is already plenty of that among PAS figures. The real question is why, for all these years, local “investigators” passed by the construction site, saw that something completely different from a cultural center was being built, and did nothing about it.
Last year, on the eve of the elections, such an investigation would have been far more interesting.
