The mayor of Sector 1, Clotilda Armand, systematically opposed restaurants and terraces in Herăstrău Park. The best pubs are there. HotNews.ro asked her what was going on.

• The law states that you can confiscate money you have earned through illegal activity. But the system of “making a new company” to move a restaurant is widespread, the mayor says.

Herăstrău Park is under the administration of the General City Hall of the capital, and therefore all construction permits are issued by this institution, Clotilda Armand explains in an interview for HotNews.ro readers.

“The only thing I can do is related to operating permits. And then, to solve the problem, I focused on this part to legislate the obtaining of the operating permit with the construction permit,” says Armand.

The law provides for the confiscation of money obtained illegally. “But enforcement is cumbersome”

Another legal lever is the confiscation of the income received during the period of illegal activity of the terraces.

“What I can do, and am doing, is to proceed with the confiscation of the income received during the period when the terrace worked without an exploitation permit. We are in the process of confiscating 20 million lei,” says the mayor.

However, the procedure is complex and involves the cooperation of several institutions, the mayor states. Steps listed by Clotilde Armand:

• “How do we do it? The local police go to the terrace and find that she is operating without a work license and file a report. This report, of course, the administrator refuses to sign it, refuses to receive it, we have to send it by mail, through the executor.”
• “The report is challenged in court and all this madness continues for maybe six months, nine months. We systematically win the courts. All they do is buy time.”
• “Then we do a second report that determines it is still operating without an operating permit.”
• “All the income that this restaurant terrace brought in, between those two minutes, can be confiscated by law. In order to proceed with the confiscation, first of all, the Economic Police should come and calculate how much these revenues were.”

Relations with the economic police

The mayor says that over time the cooperation of the authorities has also been regulated.

“We pray to them (the economic police, no), at first it was difficult, but now it is easier for them. We were the first UAT to go through all these processes and it took time until we were able to set them up and get input/cooperation from all government agencies,” explained Clotilde Armand.

The next step is ANAF, which must confiscate these revenues. But even here, according to the mayor, difficulties arise.

Widespread “create a new company” system.

“There were some ANAFs that accepted, but also ANAFs that took their time, etc. Once ANAF has contacted and agreed, the seizure will be made. What I can tell you is that the moment ANAF steps in and does this, these movies are usually shut down. Then we manage to go to the end,” explained the mayor.

The problem is that other businesses are opening that do the same thing, says the mayor. Armand describes the overall system at the Sector 1 level:

• “We have very noisy restaurants where every weekend there is a different company that organizes events to avoid the confiscation system I described to you.”

Why Herăstrau is better

From this point of view, in Herăstrău, says Armand, it is better, because the land is leased by the state under contracts, and the contractor cannot be changed to a new company.

• “At Herăstrau Park, things are a bit better, because these terraces are on land concessioned by ALPAB to a certain person/company, and they cannot change the company.”
• “If that company can no longer operate because its accounts have been blocked by ANAF, usually no other company can come.”
• “We are now in a legal situation where we ensure that a company that has a concession agreement with ALPAB cannot subcontract with another company. That is, we are in a legal process to prevent these companies from continuing to operate some terraces when they do not have a license to operate.”

“Permit to operate includes ISU permit!”

Clotilda Armand believes that it is necessary to change the legislation so that the city hall can close restaurants that operate illegally.

“We should have the authority to simply close, not allow access to a restaurant, to a terrace that does not have a permit to operate, if we are warned and it is in real danger,” she believes.

“Attention, the operating permit also includes the ISU permit! I mean, we are in a situation where we know that the terrace does not have a work permit, we did not give them a work permit, I do not want to mention the dramatic case, we inform both the Municipal Police and the National Police, but we do not allow to prevent access to these buildings by force and then it is a problem. He works on his own responsibility,” explained the mayor.

Another proposal is to write on the facades of restaurants that they are operating without authorization.

Mayor says patrons have ‘arrogance that’s hard to describe’

“Do you know how powerful these terraces and rooms are? How much pressure did I get? I mean, it’s a very hard war. It’s a pressure, an arrogance that’s hard to describe.”

“They absolutely do not care that we do not give them permission, they treat the whole process with great disdain. There are people who come to tell me that it is not a good idea to try to solve this problem, that there are some powerful people who own these terraces and this is a war that will only bring me problems and not benefits,” he added. Clotilda Armand said in an interview with HotNews.ro.