ANAF launches offensive in Iohannis family house scandal

ANAF has officially started the procedures to seize the house where Klaus Iohannis' family lives and sued the former president for the recovery of one million euros considered by the state as "money illegally collected from rents", according to a press release issued by the public institution.

In the cited document, ANAF states: "The Romanian State, through the DGRFP Braşov, has registered an action with the competent court requesting that a former president of Romania be required to pay compensation for the lack of use of the 1/2 share of a building located in the center of the municipality of Sibiu.

The action represents a continuation of the steps that ANAF has taken to recognize the State's property right and recover the compensation determined by the lack of use of this building. Given that the defendants refused voluntary payment, the action also requested the court to institute precautionary measures on their assets, in order to guarantee the recovery of the amounts due to the State. We assure public opinion that all legal measures will be taken promptly in order to defend all the interests of the Romanian State.”

The request represents the continuation of the steps by which the Tax Office is fighting to recover the huge damage generated by rents collected for almost two decades by the family of the former president of the country, who had acquired the property in question, located at 29 Nicolae Bălcescu Street in the municipality of Sibiu, based on a will declared false by the courts. And because the Iohannis family refused voluntary payment, ANAF is now requesting seizure of the movable and immovable assets of the former president and his wife, being determined to recover every euro of what it considers to be certain debts of Klaus Iohannis.

The debt imputed to Klaus Iohannis amounts to approximately one million euros, an amount derived from rents illegally collected on the property also purchased illegally, a house that the state confiscated after years of trials, expert assessments and scandalous revelations. The former president is said to have been betting on the idea that, once the property becomes state property, the rest of the amount fades away. But ANAF quickly discovered that the confiscated property was not worth nearly as much as the damage: the house is in poor condition, unusable and cannot be sold to cover even a small part of the millions owed. The head of ANAF recently publicly confirmed that the property cannot be sold on favorable terms and is only a residual piece in a huge file.

The story of the confiscated house has already become a landmark of the Romanian transition: tainted inheritances, forged wills, relatives who are not related to the original owners, years of lucrative rentals, slow authorities and a legal battle that has stretched over more than two decades. The property in the center of Sibiu was claimed after the Revolution by Nicolae Baştea, who sold half of the house to Klaus and Carmen Iohannis for $3,200, a ridiculous amount, if not suspicious. The years that followed opened Pandora's box: the will was forged, contained two types of writing, and Baştea was not a direct heir of the owner Eliseu Ghenea, but a relative by marriage with non-existent rights to the house.

But this building is not the only controversial episode related to the Iohannis family. In fact, the "house scandal" is an entire chapter of the last two decades in Romania, a complicated network of legal restitutions, leases, validations and invalidations. The Iohannis family came to own no less than six buildings in central Sibiu, most of which were acquired following restitutions operated through the courts, some of which were later contested and returned. While Iohannis was growing in public notoriety and his political career was gaining momentum, the controversies regarding how these properties were obtained never disappeared, but only deepened.

Two of the houses were permanently lost after the courts found serious problems in the procedures through which they had been taken over. In the case of one of the claimed properties, the courts established that the documents filed by the Baştea heirs, based on which Iohannis and his wife became co-owners, were based on unreal documents. Other properties have had, over time, related litigation regarding the way in which the restitutions were carried out, the existence of contradictory documents, including suspicions of complicity between various intermediaries and alleged heirs. Some procedures have been resumed and canceled, and others have been verified over the years without the public ever receiving a complete picture.

During all this time, the property that has become the main subject of the ANAF trial today was rented for 17 years to Raiffeisen Bank, during which time the Iohannis family collected between 260,000 and 320,000 euros, money that, with interest and penalties, brought the total amount to be recovered to almost one million euros. And the fact that the same family benefited, at different times, from considerable income from several of the properties whose acquisition was later contested, fueled political, legal and public suspicions and disputes.

At this point, Klaus Iohannis can no longer avoid a direct confrontation with ANAF. The Romanian state is demanding his money back, is pursuing his assets to guarantee the recovery of the damage and is showing no signs of giving up. For the first time, after a decade at the head of the country, the former president is discovering that, once back among ordinary citizens, the rules apply to him too. And the Tax Office, when it comes for you, doesn't knock on the door for a discussion. It comes in with all the legal instruments and doesn't leave without what it considers to be its due.