Gheorghe “Pinalti” Ștefan — Middleman and Football Fan
In countries like Romania, actively battling corruption, the mistake is often to focus exclusively on national-level politicians at the expense of local ones. Indeed, while the slicing and dicing of public funds and assets is usually decided in Bucharest, a surprising amount of money is embezzled at the local level. As was the case with mayor Onțanu, local politicians are just as prolific at bending and breaking laws — while also getting more leeway and less than their high profile peers. One of the classic sayings on the Romanian political scene is “Well, he may be a crook, but at least he gets things done”. This is often the case at the local level where there is a feeling of kinship and camaraderie between the taxpayers getting swindled and the corrupt local politician. Moreover, the cunning local level politician can become as rich as any senator if they are sufficiently connected or are of sufficient usefulness to their party.
Gheorghe Ștefan is one such local politician, a “crook that got things done”. As the 10-year mayor of Piatra Neamț, a north-eastern city of some 85,000 inhabitants, Ștefan reigned supreme in the city and county for most of the time the Democratic Liberal Party (PD-L) was in power. Ștefan got his nickname of “Pinalti” (penalty kick, as pronounced in a thick Moldavian accent) from the passion with which he asked for penalty kicks whenever Ceahlăul Piatra Neamț, the local team, played — he even registered his nickname with the national trademark office. Like many notorious Romanian politicians with a passion for football and publicity, Ștefan was also the main investor and owner of the team. This elevated the mayor of a rather non-descript mountainous city to become a household name with football fans and corruption watchers everywhere.
Gheorghe Ștefan was a businessman before he was a politician and a successful one at that. He was the managing director for a state company before the fall of communism, which he quickly bought out after 1989 thanks to a “small loan” from a rich uncle in America. After 15 years of managing companies, Ștefan boasted that he had amassed a fortune of over $7 million — and all this even before starting his political career. While he was counted among the top richest Romanians upon his election, he only declared a house, an apartment and a 1991 Peugeot as assets in his mandatory financial disclosure forms. Like several Romanian politicians, Ștefan owned a small (local) media empire in Piatra Neamț, which helped raise his local profile. As mayor, Gheorghe Ștefan enjoyed good standing at the local level, using his political connections to secure more taxpayer funding for Piatra Neamț, and was generally seen as a successful businessman and a no-nonsense politician who saw which way the wind was blowing. He financed the local team from his own pocket. He built a cable-car system in town. And you could see him on national television with his thick drawl playing the wise fool of football.
Unfortunately, even though he “got things done”, Gheorghe Ștefan did not shy away from the first part of the above-mentioned dictum. In his spare time, when he was not building cable-cars or trading football players, Gheorghe Ștefan was one of the lynchpins in an international corruption scandal, widely known in Romania as the “Microsoft Affair”.
The Microsoft Licensing Scandal was — and still is — a major corruption investigation in Romania involving bribes paid to politicians in exchange for price increases to licensed Microsoft products. While the whole affair is a nebulous, difficult to follow case, involving politicians in three different administrations, Romanian IT companies and large multinationals, a few names were identified as ringleaders — one of which is Gheorghe Ștefan. Ștefan, and a few choice other businessmen were accused of acting as middlemen for bribes worth — nearly €60 million and were indicted by the DNA, Romania’s anticorruption body. With evidence stacking against them, the middlemen started cutting deals in exchange for less time served, and Ștefan was among the first. He revealed, first to prosecutors and then even to the press the inner workings of the scam and managed to cut down his initial sentence by informing on his former party boss.
Needless to say this was the end of Pinalti’s political career. The now ex-politician went to prison for six years in the Microsoft case, with an additional forfeiture of €3.9 million in assets. But that was just the start.
- He pled guilty to an additional charge for illegally funding his party, racking up another three years and €165,000 in forfeiture and is under investigation for another series of prejudices brought to the Romanian state.
- The Romanian Post office lost nearly €5 million thanks to a deputy postmaster general for whom Ștefan obtained the position and
- Ștefan is also accused of influence trafficking and putting pressure on the Romanian Rural Investment Agency on behalf of a private company.
A decade and a half after his political debut, it seems Ștefan’s star (both as politician and businessman) has waned, under the weight of his many corruption scandals, linking the local politician to big names at the very top.
