UPETROM

Upetrom is a tangled company that tends to see ownership shift pretty frequently, confusing and shielding the real owners and powers behind the company. Upetrom officially is under the ownership at the moment of Liviu Luca, Gabriel Comanescu, Lacevine International and Brighton Capital—each has its “interesting” connections, though all are part of the same group underneath Sorin Ovidiu Vantu’s empire.

  • Liviu Luca – one of the stakeholders of Upetrom, who is widely known around Romania as Vantu’s “frontman,” making business deals for him. Luca run’s one of Romania’s largest networks of labor unions, allowing him and Vantu to hold much sway on the ground. Luca is also widely known to have a slew of business connections into Romania and Eastern Europe’s banks, insurance companies, media outlets, etc.
  • Gabriel Comanescu – also one of the stakeholders of Upetrom, but is also the General Manager. He is also widely known as one of Vantu’s “frontmen,” also managing a few of his other companies, like Grup Servicii Petrolierre (GSP or Group Service Oil Drilling).
  • Lacevine International and Brighton Capital – both are offshore companies that reportedly belong to Vantu, though their ownership is a closed fact. They are both registered at the same address in the British Virgin Islands.

Every connection of Upetrom and relationship by its shareholders with someone larger comes back to Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, the self-proclaimed Mafioso of Romania.

SORIN OVIDIU VANTU

Vantu is believed to have been part of the Romanian secret service, Securitate, something he does not deny. Within the Securitate, it is believed that he worked heavily with the Russian KGB—which was only natural behind the Iron Curtain. After the fall of the Soviet Union and that Curtain, many secret service officials left their posts and found their way to either private security or organized crime—with going to the latter.

Since then, he has been running a series of shell and real companies that reportedly run one of the larger organized crime brackets out of Romania, but is also fully hooked into other Easter European mobs, as well as, Russia’s organized crime groups. Vantu has been accused and charged with quite a few crimes, including money laundering, theft, fraud, embezzlement and trafficking. He has served a few years in prison, but was pardoned by the Romanian government.

He has an intimately close friendship with Romania’s ruling government, specifically with Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu. One of Upetrom’s board members is also Sebastian Vladescu, who also served as Finance Minister under Tariceanu. He also has a nickname and common reference within Romanian media as being the “godfather” of Romania’s politicians, since he has either helped or been connected to most parliamentarians and ministers.

Inside Romania, he has a pretty poor reputation even though he has so much power and so many connections. This is because among some of his accused rackets, Vantu ran a series of banks and mutual funds that reportedly cheated hundreds of thousands of Romanians out of their money. Of course, this was during the time after the Soviet collapse in which these sorts of schemes were rampant across Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Because of this reputation, Vantu keeps a pretty low public profile, but his business and political activities are still large and dominant.

During the spell after the fall of the Soviet Union and rise of the oligarchs and organized crime kingpins, Vantu worked closely with Russia’s now-fallen oil giant Yukos. It was through this relationship that he learned how to run his own energy companies, leading to Vantu first acquiring some small energy firm’s around Romania’s oil company Petrom and then finally acquiring Upetrom. This also laid the groundwork with Upetrom’s future dealings with Russia’s natural gas giant, Gazprom. Since 2003, Upetrom has supplied Gazprom with drilling rigs and is “accused” of being one of the gateway companies for the Russian major into Romania.

SCANDALS SURROUNDING UPETROM

*there are quite a few “scandals” surrounding Upetrom, but listed are the larger ones outside of simply being underneath Vantu.

  • Upetromhas been accused by some politicians of receiving “special financial arrangements and benefits” from the Romanian government—both past and present administrations. Under these accusations comes charges of Upetrom’s debts to the government and Petrom being forgiven without reason or cause; arrangements to not pay the company’s VAT taxes; special deals for assets that were to be put up for auction.
  • Upetrom is the service company and supplier for Rompetrol, in which the latter has been acused of selling large energy and distribution assets illegally to Russian companies. Romania’s parliament ended up freezing Rompetrol and it’s manager Patriciu’s assets and bank accounts on these charges; but during this time Upetrom’s manager Comanescu’s accountes were also frozen because of his involvement in the scheme.
  • Upetrom has sold drilling machinery in 2003 to Romira Trading Company, which has been proven to be a front company for Iraqi citizen Sharba Reyadh N. Abdul Amer—a suspected terrorist by Interpol and the FBI.
  • Upetrom has been under investigation by the United Nations under the UN Oil for Food Program in which the UN claims Upetrom paid $409,000 to acquire 5 contracts in Iraq valued between $15-36 million. Those investigations are still pending.
  • Upetrom has shares in Romexterra Bank, a bank that has been accused by Romanian authorities of money laundering.