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Teamnet files for insolvency
Romania's Teamnet, which has been involved in a corruption scandal over contracts for IT services, has filed for insolvency on Monday, according to data posted on the justice ministry's website quted by seenews.com.
The IT company filed for insolvency at Prahova county court, data showed.
"At this moment we are working on a reorganization plan. We made this decision in order to be able to maintain ourselves as a business and fulfil commitments to employees, customers, partners and suppliers," Teamnet representatives said in a statement for local news agency Mediafax.
At the beginning of March, the CEO of Teamnet, Bogdan Padiu, was remanded in judicial custody at the request of Romania's anti-graft agency DNA in a probe of contracts for IT services rendered to the public sector.
Initiaally, Padiu was detained for 24 hours and although DNA prosecutors requested a preventive 30-day detention, Prahova county court ruled that the suspect will be put in judicial custody for 60 days while investigations continue.
According to DNA prosecutors, Teamnet had paid between 3 million euro ($3.17 million) and 10 million euro between 2007 and 2014 to controversial businessman and ex-MP Sebastian Ghita to secure IT contracts with some public institutions.
Ghita is the founder of Teamnet.
Padiu was accused of continued complicity in influence peddling and money laundering and of establishing an organised criminal group, DNA has said.
Sebastian Ghita, who went missing in December, is currently on Europol's list of the most wanted persons.
In the same investigation, Ghita's brother-in-law and and general manager of his IT firm Asesoft, Cristian Anastasescu, has also been accused of wrongdoing. Anastasescu was also put in judicial custody for 60 days.
Teamnet was established in 2001 and has subsidiaries in Romania, Turkey, Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Switzerland and Moldova.
According to data published by the government's Agency for Romania's Digital Agenda , AADR, Teamnet was awarded 26 public procurement contracts worth some 57 million euro in total between 2011 and 2015. Teamnet created and implemented national projects such as the integrated system of public pensions, the real estate registry system, the electronic visa service, the workforce management system REVISAL, the agriculture payments APIA integrated system and many more.
The contracts champion according to AADR data was Siveco Romania, whose head Irina Socol was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison for tax evasion in May 2016.
Teamnet posted a consolidated turnover of over 110 million euro in 2015, up 18% over the previous year, according to the latest data available on the finance ministry's website.
In September, Teamnet expanded its operations in the Middle East through a project aimed at implementing an online system that will issue municipal permits in Oman.
In 2016, the company received 4.6 million euro financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB).
Both financial institutions increased their shareholdings in Teamnet at the end of 2015, paying a total of 1.5 million euro for the additional shares they acquired.