WASHINGTON, January 25, 2005 - Iosif Dan, a top advisor to Romanian President Ion Iliescu, explained in a recent interview with the Center for Public Integrity why he had accepted money from a petroleum company vying for a piece of the country’s oil-privatization action.

“I have taken some money from these boys, as a loan, and this seems perfectly okay to me,” Dan said. “Should I have gone to a bank that would give me money with … interest instead of going to these people? They are my friends.”

The frank and surprising interview took place in the Cotroceni Palace, the headquarters of the Romanian Presidency. Dan is just one of several top Romanian officials who have connections to the oil industry.

With proven crude oil reserves of about 950 million barrels and with the largest refining capacity in Central and Eastern Europe, Romania, a nation of 22.6 million people, plays an important role in the European oil economy.

From the end of the Second World War until December 1989, when Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed, the Romanian oil industry was entirely State-run. Since then, it has been gradually privatized and restructured and its refining capacity downsized.

Full story