Rompetrol's chairman Dinu Patriciu yesterday said Ovidiu Tender, owner of the Tender Group and Marian Iancu, administrator of VGB, the group that manages Rafo Onesti refinery, had tried to blackmail him by revealing information about Rompetrol and Petromidia's privatisation.
"We received threats that if I didn't relinquish control of Rompetrol by having it merge with Rafo, I would be in a lot of trouble. They threatened to go public with a memorandum (about Petromidia's privatisation and current situation i.e.), as well as with a series of investigations and disclosures that would destroy Rompetrol within three months," Patriciu told a news conference.
He added he had not ruled out the possibility of a merger during the talks with the two early in March.
"I replied to their proposal by saying anything can be done if they went to our investment bank and had all the documents audited. It obviously was an attempt to save Rafo. We cannot have such a solution imposed on us through blackmail. I will have no pressures, particularly because they are backed by such secret police-like (*) political materials," Patriciu said. (* the words translated as secret police-like are actually a reference to the adjective used for anything related to the Securitate, the former communist secret police and its way of doing things).
The Rompetrol chairman showed the news conference the Memorandum drafted by the Department of National Security subordinated to the Presidential Administration. The document was signed by Paul Sarbu, department advisor and endorsed by Ioan Talpes, defence and national security advisor of the President.
The document was a "libellous material," "an outright lie", Patriciu said, adding the drafting of such a paper was not the Presidential Administration's job.
vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro
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