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.
Last year, investigators said, with the deal seemingly secured, Sturdza signed a contract to sell the land for €140m (£105m) to German renewable energy and logging company Prokon.
According to Romanian press reports, Ghika is alleged to be a central part of this plan. Ghika’s inheritance entitles him to a small part of the disputed forest area. False declarations exaggerating the amount of land Ghika is entitled to would smooth the restitution process for Sturdza, who could push the claim through court in Ghika’s name.
Ghika said he has been made a scapegoat by Sturdza. Talking over the phone from the Fort Riley army base in Kansas, US, Ghika told the Guardian: “I am aware of the allegations being made by Sturdza. These are completely untrue. Sturdza tape-recorded our meeting and has then twisted the words in it. We discussed restitution issues but we came to no agreement. I have entered into no agreement then or since.”
Since 1990, over 3m hectares of forest in Romania has been returned to purported former owners through the restitution process. An audit last year by the Romanian court of accounts claimed that 20% of these reclamations were illegal – a total of 600,000 hectares. Prime minister Victor Ponta has referred to a “restitution mafia”, a wide spread network of well-connected businessmen and politicians who have exploited corruption in the law courts to claim billions of euros of land and forest in the last two decades.
In the 25 years since the end of communism, Romania has lost 370,000 hectares of forest – including some of Europe’s last areas of virgin forest – to illegal deforestation, according to a report last year by the Romanian Court of Accounts.
Gabriel Paun, founder of the environmental crime investigation NGO Agent Green, says this is linked directly to the restitution process. “Restitution is rigged so that the forest goes to the big players in Romania. It is then sold or leased immediately to international logging companies, who clear cut huge areas without any respect for Romanian or European law,”’ he says. “It’s organised crime on the biggest scale”.
