The State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture Adrian Pintea, former head of the Agency for Payments and Interventions in Agriculture (APIA), confirms that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office requested documents from APIA regarding applications for European subsidies submitted by two companies close to PSD General Secretary Paul Stenescu for reeds from Danube Delta.

“Indeed, starting from 2023, the territories in the Danube Delta also became eligible (due to the law promoted by the current Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbou – no). (…) There are about four companies that have applied for these areas (…) And indeed, a complaint has probably been filed and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is conducting inspections. They asked for documents, contracts, and APIA sent these documents,” said the state secretary in an interview with Europa Libera.

When asked when the European Public Prosecutor’s Office investigation was launched and the documents required, the Secretary of State replied “sometime last autumn”.

The Paying Agency in Agriculture and the European Commission launched inspections after the two companies, which also included PSD leader Paul Stanescu’s son Stefan Stanescu and the wife of a priest from Tulcea who was an adviser to Paul Stanescu, were shareholders.

Team “Romania, I love you!” showed in an October 2023 investigation how a legislative amendment proposed by the current Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, would convert land in the delta into subsidized pasture.

At the initiative of Social Democrat Florin Barbu, when he headed the Agriculture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, in October 2023 the parliament secretly amended the law according to which tens of thousands of hectares of land in the Danube Delta were turned into meadows.

The project was quickly voted on by parliamentarians and later unveiled by President Klaus Iohannis.

Two companies that controlled cane cutting in the Delta applied for European money, and after the investigation, Stefan Stanescu and the priest’s wife left their shares in the two companies.

Florin Barbu says he did not know Stanescu’s son was a shareholder

“I did not know that the son of Mr. Paul Stenescu is in these companies for which the EU gave permission to pay for reed pastures in Romania. The control body checks documents for the legality of subsidies. We are not only talking about sugarcane, not only dairy cows, we are not only talking about vegetables, this applies to all subsidies in Romania,” said Florin Barbu, as quoted by Digi24.

According to sources cited by Știrile Pro TV, a request has been submitted to the Payment Agency in Agriculture for the payment of 36 thousand hectares of reeds in the Danube Delta, and the amount will be more than 5 million euros.

The payment was blocked due to the suspicion reported by the investigation “Romania, I love you!”.

APIA stopped paying the subsidy due to the fact that the money is paid to the companies holding the land concessions, not the activities carried out on the land, and the two companies did not concession the covered areas to the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Administration. reed, but only reed harvesting activities, according to G4Media.

APIA Tulcea approved the granting of subsidies, but APIA Bucharest started an audit to ensure that the institution was operating correctly.

Question marks about the submitted application for grants

The head of APIA, Ionuc Lupu, says that the file submitted by the two companies raises many questions. They did not provide the land as required by law, and it was impossible to collect the stated amount of green cane, because again the law allows it to be cut only in winter, when it is already dry and inedible for animals, Digi24 notes.

Florin Barbou denied that he would have asked Ionutz Lupa to leave APIA after overseeing the situation with these funds, Digi24 reports.

Paul Stenescu is a PSD senator since 2016, general secretary of the party led by Marcel Colacu, PSD Olt leader and former president of the Olt County Council.

He is one of the most powerful and influential leaders of the PSD and a close friend of Gabriela Firea, former minister of the family and current PSD senator.

Florin Barbu, the current Minister of Agriculture, was nominated to the government by Paul Stanescu, according to the central media.