Marius Locic — The Millionaire Massage Therapist
For a country of some nineteen million with one of the lowest GDPs per capita in the European Union, Romania has a surprising number of millionaires. All major cities sometimes seem chock-full of luxury cars and Romania’s tourist resorts have homes and hotels to rival the best that the Cote d’Azur has to offer — and at a mark-up. Perhaps less surprising for a country in which the rule of law is a debatable concept, a lot of Romania’s millionaires end up in prison. The concept of business ethics is often fluid for many of the country’s millionaires, as are concepts like overleveraging or competition in the marketplace. Millions are made through connections, illegal land grabs and exclusive contracts with the state. While some of Romania’s “cardboard millionaires” flee (such as Ghita and Popoviciu) and others duly serve their time they invariably get off easy.
Marius Locic is one such Romanian millionaire: a man of luxury homes, Rolls Royces and conspiracies to commit crimes with politicians. He fits the profile of the millionaire to a tee: he started his business career with investments in media and real estate and was close to several decision makers, both in business and in politics. And it would be these connections that would land the man in prison.
Locic is, like many of Romania’s richest, a real-estate millionaire first and foremost. Like Popoviciu, Becali and many, many others, he made his money by speculating with cheap property in Romania’s turbulent 90s, cheap property that usually belonged to the state and was appropriated through shell companies. This led to a plethora of open trials and, potentially, to a plethora of sentences for Locic, mostly revolving around fraud and embezzlement.
Unlike other businessmen, Locic got in the media industry early by founding several low-quality newspapers including a paparazzo-style tabloid, an investigative journalism outfit that was both highly selective in its targets (to say the least) and short-lived and, of course, a football periodical. The last one was a given considering Locic’s proximity and friendship to one of Romania’s most notorious jailbird millionaires, Gigi Becali, who is the flamboyant owner of one of the country’s main football teams. Indeed, Locic’s multi-million dollar real-estate company was the long-time sponsor to Becali’s Steaua București and the two businessmen were often seen together in both work and private capacities.
Seeking extra-legal solutions, the businessman came across one of Romania’s more notorious corrupt politicians, Senator Cătălin Voicu to whom he offered large sums of money (119,000 Lei, in Locic’s case) and favourable exposure in his newspapers in exchange for subverting the course of justice. Voicu intervened for Locic by trying to pressure the Bucharest police not to charge him in a fraud case. Alongside several of his employees, Locic himself “cooked” the books of his real-estate company to hide the fraud.
Voicu however was well known to Romania’s anticorruption authorities as an “enabler” for corrupt businessmen and already under investigation. In 2013, Locic, Voicu alongside a judge and another notorious businessman, Costel Cășuneanu all ended up in prison on influence trafficking and forgery charges after almost 3000 days of prosecution. Even if Locic was sentenced to four years in prison, his legal woes are far from over, with several open court cases, especially now that his would-be facilitator, Voicu is no longer a politician.
Even in prison, Locic still made the front page of Romanian tabloids — a secretly obtained recording surfaced of the millionaire giving Gigi Becali a vigorous back rub while the two were incarcerated together. Locic later even got punished while in prison for his proximity and friendship with Becali. He was accused of giving Becali his SIM card, which Romanian inmates can use to make a limited amount of calls, because the latter had already expended all his allotted minutes. Otherwise, Locic’s behaviour behind bars seems to have been “irreproachable”, with the billionaire attending religious services, working in the kitchen and, last but not least, writing not one but two books. The latter feat, a tradition among Romania’s high profile jailbirds, on account of “intellectual labour” being considered grounds for a reduced sentence is part of a larger anticorruption investigation into collusion between academics and prison-politicians (and businessmen) to commit intellectual fraud for reduced sentences.
Marius Locic is now once again free but perhaps only momentarily. He is still under investigation in several high profile cases, including the notorious ”Bank Fraud case”. The latter revolves around several businessmen and bank administrators who obtained illegal loans on behalf of companies that could not afford lines of credit. Locic allegedly acted as a middleman in both influence and delivering money to none other than his friend Cătălin Voicu, who intervened on behalf of the other businessmen. The investigation, like others involving Locic, is still ongoing. Considering the pace of investigations in Romania and the eight year start-to-finish time of Locic’s previous case, the verict might find the businessman happily retired somewhere on a beach in Africa.
