High-ranking official stands accused of colluding with criminals to illegally claim 43,000 hectares of forest land owned by the state.
A high-ranking British army official has said he is an innocent scapegoat in a scandal over an alleged illegal land grab of a huge tract of Romanian forest.
In a court hearing reported by Romanian media last week, Christopher Ghika, the commanding officer of the 1st battalion of the Irish Guards, was accused of working with an organised crime group to illegally claim 43,000 hectares (106,210 acres) of state owned forest.
A distant descendent of a Romanian prince, brigadier Ghika was said to have agreed to exaggerate his inheritance rights so as to claim the forest through Romania’s restitution process – the process by which land that was taken by the communist state in the 1940s is returned to former owners.
According to press reports, a tape recording revealed a conversation between him and a man called Gheorghe Paltin Sturdza, a Romanian businessman accused of restitution crimes. The recording – which was given as evidence by Sturdza himself – was presented in court by a prosecutor who suggested it demonstrated that Ghika and Sturdza had colluded to issue false declarations which would entitle them to the ownership of the forest area.
A document said to be Sturdza’s notes of the meeting was also presented in court, and was said to show that Ghika had promised to write a false declaration – translated by the Romanian media as a will – which Ghika would be send to Sturdza along with his personal legal papers.
Following a two-year investigation by Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), investigators claim Sturdza has assembled a network of top Romanian politicians, judges and businessmen to carry out the restitution scam. They say that, assisted by a lawyer and member of Romanian parliament called Ioan Adam, the network spent millions of euros buying off influential figures and pushing Sturdza’s claim for the forest through law courts.
