Dan Voiculescu, the founder of Romania’s Intact Media Group, has received a new jail sentence.
Business Review reports that it amounts to two years and is for a case involving the blackmail of an official from RCS&RDS.
It adds that Sorin Alexandrescu, the general manager of Antena TV Group, has received a jail sentence of 3.5 years, while Camelia Voiculescu, the daughter of Dan Voiculescu, received a suspended sentence of two years.
Dan Voiculescu is already serving a 10-year sentence for the illegal privatisation of the Institute of Food Research (ICA) and will not spend any more time behind bars as the new sentence will be merged with the old one
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In the new case, prosecutors say that Antena TV Group wanted to sign a broadcast deal with RCS&RDS, Romania’s leading cable and DTH operator, for its own channels. While the negotiations where under way, the various media outlets of Intact had started a “smear” campaign against RCS&RDS.
Antena TV Group wanted to get €6.4 million annually from RCS&RDS, as part of a five-year contract.
Alexandrescu had personally tried to blackmail the administrator of RCS&RDS, Ioan Bendei, so as to sign the contract, according to prosecutors.
In addition, Alexandrescu obtained secret tax information from the head of ANAF so as to get the upper hand during “negotiations” with Bendei.
In the rulings by the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Serban Pop, the former head of ANAF, received a two-year sentence for disclosing classified information.
The sentences are not final and Intact Media Group has said it will appeal against them.
In a statement supplied to Broadband TV News, it also added that in the same case Antena 3, Intact’s news station, and Intact Publishing, the publisher of the daily Jurnalul national newspaper, as well as the former representative of the latter entity, were acquitted of all charges.
