Controls - Foreigners without Work Permit

This year nine football clubs in Divizia A (the Romanian First Division) have been fined by the Office for the Workforce Migration (OWM) because they owned foreign sportsmen which didn’t have work permits in Romania.

INVASION. Nigerian Abiodun, from FC National, is one of the tens of foreign players in Divizia A.

OWM presented its activity report for this year yesterday. The office is the public institution having the competence of remitting and extending the work permits for the foreign citizens which are to work in Romania. "There were also six foreign citizens who tried cheating on the Romanian state by showing false documents. There were also 44 companies which employed foreigners without obtaining the work permits for Romania", stated Nicoleta Andreescu, the director of the OWM.

IRREGULARITIES. Nine football clubs from Divizia A have been fined in 2004 by the OWM after being discovered as having employed foreign citizens without them having work permits.

The total value of the fines given to the clubs was 750,000,000 lei. "There have been some chairmen who tried to avoid the fines and called us. However, they didn’t manage to get out with it. The fines have been contested by some of the clubs", stated Aurel Teodorescu, the deputy director of the OWM, yesterday. Besides fining the foreign employees without work permits, some measures regarding their legal staying in Romania have been taken. For now, the OWM officials refused naming the fined clubs.

GAIN

Almost 90,000 Romanians left to work abroad this year. They were helped by the OWM. These 87,893 people earned a total sum of 124,474,600 euros. Most of them chose Germany as destination (36,395), then Spain (26,115). In these three years of activity of the OWM, from 2002 till now, the Romanians who left to work abroad and were mediated by the institution obtained incomes of 319,054,593 euros.

IN SIGHT

The OWM representatives didn’t say the names of the nine clubs in Divizia A that were fined because of having in their batch of players foreigners without work permits yesterday. In October, the controls brought into the light irregularities regarding work permits of five players from FC National, three from Rapid, one from Dinamo and one from "Poli" Iasi. No one knows anything about the other three teams fined. On the other hand, in the two seasons of competition (second part of the 2003-2004 Championship and the first part of the 2004-2005 Championship), in Divizia A Gloria Bistrita, FC National, Universitatea Craiova, Dinamo, Steaua, Rapid, Fc Brasov, Apulum Alba-Iulia, "Poli" AEK Timisoara, Fc Arges, CFR CLUJ, Ceahlaul Piatra-Neamt, Petrolul Ploiesti and FC Oradea (the last three relegated in the summer) were the teams to have foreign players.