https://www.occrp.org/en/coronavirus/convict-and-coronavirus-romanias-million-mask-mess
Documents obtained by OCCRP partner RISE Romania show that B.S.G. Business Select SRL secured a no-bid deal worth over 800,000 euros to supply the masks and nearly 26,000 protective suits to Romania’s strategic state healthcare supplier, Unifarm, which distributed them to health facilities across Romania.
B.S.G. was originally set up to sell alternative health remedies. But in March, a majority stake was purchased by Simona Ciulavu, who worked under Prime Minister Orban when he was the transport minister, and has business ties to another former politician, Robert Constantin Ionescu.
B.S.G. purchased the protective equipment from a Turkish supplier for a total of 614,400 euros (US$665,395) on March 18. A day later, it sold them to Unifarm for 865,752 euros ($928,963), a quick profit of over 40 percent, according to Unifarm’s own public statements.
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Corporate records show that Ciulavu acquired a 60 percent stake in B.S.G. Business Select on March 11 — the same day the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global pandemic.
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B.S.G. Business Select registered with the Romanian state for VAT purposes just five days after Ciulavu became its majority shareholder. Three days later, it delivered the masks to Unifarm.
Its supplier was an Istanbul-based firm that produces clothes and medical textiles. Co-owner Ulku Farimaz Guler confirmed to OCCRP, through a Romanian-speaking employee, that her company had sold the million masks to B.S.G. through another Turkish exporter linked to her business, after receiving a call from “a lady” in Romania. She declined to elaborate on who this buyer was, or provide other information about the deal.
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Ciulavu has a colorful background.
She previously worked at Bucharest City Hall when Orban, who is now prime minister, served as the capital’s deputy mayor. In 2008, the year after Orban became Romania’s transport minister, Ciulavu moved to his ministry, taking a job as a financial specialist in a department that handled European funds.
But she lost that job in 2009 after local media revealed that she had been arrested several years earlier, while working as a government economist, for paying members of a notoriously violent gang known as “the Sportsmen” to push a licensed minibus taxi service out of its commuter route so she could take over.
At Ciulavu’s behest, gang members issued death threats to the taxi operators and even beat a driver so severely that he was hospitalized and needed two weeks of constant medical assistance, according to court documents.
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On March 19, the same day that B.S.G.’s shipment was delivered to Unifarm, former Bucharest Deputy Mayor Robert Constantin Ionescu took to Facebook to claim credit for the deal — and personally thanked Prime Minister Orban for facilitating it.
Later that night he added more details to his initial post: “Today, I managed to bring from Turkey to Romania (Through BSG Business and Akyle Security), the first shipment of 1,000,000 masks - and suits against Coronavirus!” Ionescu wrote. “Thanks for the absolute support, to the Prime Minister Ludovic Orban and to the General Director of UNIFARM, Adrian Ionel !!!”
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Ionescu has other links to Ciulavu. Corporate filings show his own company, Akyle Security, which has lucrative contracts providing private security services to multiple state companies and public institutions, is co-owned by Ciulavu’s sister and the 80-year-old father of Ciulavu’s boyfriend.
That boyfriend, Petru “Pepi” Pitcovici, was an official at Romania’s Anti-Corruption General Directorate, but lost that job after being accused of corruption himself. He was handed a two-year suspended sentence in 2017 for helping deliver a bribe (three liters of whiskey and a bottle of the local spirit palinca) to a policeman in return for dropping a criminal case.