Well, since you’re here again after reading Part I., it seems that you are either bent on righteous rage or are a glutton for punishment. Be that as it may, here comes the really revolting part.
The previously mentioned Roma family, owners of the Mühle villa left decaying, the Cârpaci clan, made their fortune after the 1989 regime change in Romania through a clever scheme hatched by one Vișinel Stanca. Since the regime change, many former owners of real estate nationalized by the communist state have been reclaiming their properties mostly by suing the current owners – generally municipal governments.
Stanca – and other members of the Cârpaci clan, most notably his son in law, Ionelaș Cârpaci, (or to be more precise, their lawyers) found out who was suing to have their properties restituted and offered their “services” for a fee or cut of the real estate’s value that seemed reasonable at the time of the offer. They then took over the legal representation of the owners and won most of the court cases against the municipality of Temesvár.
This was due partly to shrewd lawyering work and partly to strategically applied bribes – a former local judge, now a lawyer, Carmen Obârșanu, even went or record saying that “I know that several judges took large amounts of money from these Roma to make a favourable decision”. Once a court case was won, they short-changed the rightful owners by either offering them a fraction of their property’s value, or by intimidation and threats or a combination of the above.
This way, they secured ownership of 144 historical buildings in Temesvár, including two hospitals formerly ran by monastical orders. In perhaps the most outrageous of these scams, one member of the clan, Vladimir Cârpaci Jr. acquired the ownership rights of one wing of the local children’s hospital. The hospital was built mainly from the donations of local council member and wealthy wholesaler Anton Sailer at the end of the 19th century. Cârpaci Jr. then began to evict the children treated at the hospital and when asked where should they go, he said “I don’t know. This is their problem.”
In another case, Vișinel Stanca, upon acquiring ownership rights of the radiology treatment wing of the local oncology clinic, moved in with his extended family.
Stanca died this January of natural causes, and the most notable absence at his funeral was that of his heir apparent, Ionelaș Cârpaci, serving a ten-year prison sentence for fraudulent real estate transactions. This was one of the very few cases in which law enforcement and the judiciary were able to dispense a modicum of justice on the clan otherwise extremely well-protected by their army of lawyers.
Just to give you an idea of the level of protection they enjoy: the chief legal counsel of the Cârpaci clan is retired police general Florin Sandu, head of the national police between 2001-2003 and Deputy Minister of Interior between 2003-2005.
Title image: The Cârpaci clan
