ANAF took over half of the building in Sibiu owned by Klaus Iohannis until 2015

The National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) confirmed last week that it had taken over, under the law, the share of one half of the building located on Nicolae Bălcescu Street no. 29 in Sibiu, owned until 2015 by former president Klaus Iohannis. The action was carried out through the Sibiu County Administration of Public Finance, after the Romanian state acquired co-ownership rights through a vacant inheritance. "The procedure was managed according to the law. The former owners expressed their agreement regarding the access of the AJFP Sibiu to the space, without participating in this process, which put ANAF in the position of taking over the property by changing the lease," the official statement said.

ANAF President Adrian Nica stated that the institution has the obligation to administer and capitalize on assets that have become state property, emphasizing that "in this case, all procedures were followed, in full transparency."

• Debt of almost one million euros

According to information published in the press, ANAF proceeded to foreclose on the property after the Iohannis couple were notified to hand over the keys and pay the sum of approximately one million euros. This represents the equivalent of the lack of use between 1999 and 2015, a period in which the property was rented to a bank, an amount to which interest and penalties were added. Sources cited by the media claim that tax inspectors requested the surrender of the keys last week, but the former president allegedly did not respond to the notifications, which led to the change of ownership and the direct takeover of the space.

• A case over two decades old

The case of the house in Sibiu has a complex history. The building, along with the one on Gheorghe Magheru Street no. 35, belonged to Eliseu and Maria Ghenea (formerly Baştea) during the interwar period, being nationalized in the 1960s. After 1990, Ioan Baştea, a great-grandson of Maria Ghenea, obtained the revocation of the nationalization in court. In 1999, he became the owner and sold half of the building on Nicolae Bălcescu to Klaus and Carmen Iohannis for the sum of 3,200 dollars. Subsequently, the Iohannis family collected considerable rents from the commercial space for 17 years, approximately 1.3 million lei (about 260,000 euros, at the current exchange rate), according to investigations by the RISE Project and the Media Investigation Center. The High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled in 2015 that the properties were illegally acquired and that they belonged to the Romanian state. However, it was only this year that ANAF completed the necessary procedures to effectively take possession of the property on Nicolae Bălcescu Street. Thus, the former head of state no longer has any legal connection with the confiscated half of the building, but he remains obliged to pay the state the sum of almost one million euros.