Business puzzles (me)

The members of the new Romanian Government have published their wealth statements yesterday, when it was the deadline for doing so. Of course the media was all over it, and the new ministers’ wealth was – and is – all over the headlines. Ziarul Financiar has counted the Government wealth and evaluated the ministers’ possessions based on market value and has come up with a number: EUR 26 million. You can read their story here . It would have been interested if the did the same thing with the last Government so that we could compare. A larger story on the wealth of the new MPs should also take into acocunt the average age in the new Parliament.  My feeling is that, at least in the Parliament, there are many young politicians with a lot of wealth for their age. I am not saying it is either good or bad that people also make money while making politics, but I am sure this must reflect something in the Romanian reality. The few ideas I have now- and I try not to be malicious and I try to stay away from the pre-assumption that they must have done some wrong to come into such possessions at a young age-  are either that young politicians have more strenght and will to make it nowadays than the elder generation, or that it is easier to make money nowadays. I am sure there are plenty of other possible explanations, and if one comes to your mind, please share it with me. Meanwhile, if you want to take a look at the Government wealth statements, you can find them here. Enjoy.

Something really puzzled me since I have read some of the new MPs’ wealth statements. Robert Negoita, whom I have known for his investments in hotels, real estate and more recently in media, and who is now a MP, included in his wealth statement (here) all the apartments he has sold this year in two of his residential projects. I haven’t counted them all, but we’re talking hundred of apartments. His statement is tens of pages long. What strikes me is why has he included all those stransactions there? I could think of a few reasons. He has sold the apartments as individual, so that he would not pay the VAT on transactions – although the law says anyone who is selling apartments for business purposes, which is definitely the case, should be applied VAT; but the law is not respected in most of the cases, as I understand. (I see some problems coming from all this. ) So since he sold the apartments as individual, he felt compelled to include them in his statement. Again, this is my assumption. And secondly, I think he wanted to be very correct about it, since it is his first mandate as MP. He has also put a lot of detail into it. There’s the name of every buyer and the exact adress of each apartment sold. This is gold. I have savesthe pdf file from the Parliament website fearing some of the buyers may ask for their details to be removed. I found some public names there – I am not sure if they were those public persons or it was just a coincidence – for example, Robert Nicolae Turcescu and Mihaela Cornelia Radulescu, both with this additional names, appear as buyers in Confort City project – and I found out how much people have paid for the apartments. Again, this is pure gold. I don’t think any real estate developer has ever publicized list with buyers in their residential project. As a journalist, I was thrilled. I could play a lot with these piece of info. But after reading the list, something else stroke me. If Robert Negoita sold these apartments as individual, he must have invested in them as individual as well. He has several bank loans on his name too – millions of euros. Without knowing for sure this is true, it seems he is doing business the old way.