The Sold Houses Are Not to Be Returned

The people who bought former nationalized houses under the Law no. 112/1995 will be allowed to keep them, without them being affected by the terms of the new law of property, for which the Government will take full responsability.

COMPENSATIONS. The people are skeptical about the explanations that Prime Minister Tariceanu and Minister Olteanu gave.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu took part in a debate regarding the working mechanism of the "Property Fund" - which is to take care of the amends for the former owners of nationalized good. He stated then that the people who bought such houses under the Law no. 112/1995, will still own them. In exchange, the former owners will receive some amends - certain value certificates from the "Property Fund" that can be converted into money.
"The former owners who had their houses sold are not able to get them back, so they will receive cash amends, and the ones that managed to buy them will continue to own them", Tariceanu said. The Prime Minister, himself a beneficiary of the Law no. 112/1995 by buying a nationalized house, also said that the new property laws would allow the barters for the houses nationalized during the communist regime.
They will also support the just and equitable compensations for the houses that cannot be given back to their former owners and the keeping of the lodgers on the legit. Tariceanu has been supported by the Minister for the Relations with the Parliament, Bogdan Olteanu, who stated that the final decision regarding the validity of the title deeds of the former tenants will be analyzed by a Court of Law and that, for now, 12,000 such law suits are being taken care of.

ATTACK. Prime Minister Tariceanu also said that the problem of the property in Romania could have been solved equitably a long time ago, in the same manner it happened in the other former communist countries. This could have happened if the "young wolves" of communism didn’t lead SDP (the Social Democratic Party).
As for the appeal of the Parliament members for supporting the laws regarding the property, Tariceanu said that SDP and Adrian Nastase, who told the PM that the "Parliament is not an office for registering packages", are still in an "anti-reformist and anti-democratic" position. He stated that, in case that the opposition would carry a want-of-confidence motion, each of the signatures in it will be a no to Romania’s integration in the European Union.

SKEPTICISM .The daughter of the former owner of the Mociornita Leather and Shoe Factory, Marie-Rose Mociornita, seemed skeptical towards the odds for the former owners to receive their compensations from the certificates released by the "Property Fund". "If the shares are so valuable, why doesn’t the state sell them and offer the money to the former owners?", she wondered.
"I don’t understand why a person like my grandfather, who initiated the leather industry in Romania, receives stocks at a bankrupt factory, and Omar Hayssam gets to have totally gainful enterprises", Marie Rose Mociornita added. She also said that the compensations won’t get to the owners ever and that the former owners are not allowed to go to the European Court of the Human Rights in Strasbourg.

THE IRAQI DEBT. The "Property Fund" will own stocks of the state from more than 100 companies, as well as with sums coming from Romania’s book debts with states like Sudan, Syria, Mozambique, the Guinean Republic, Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, Tanzania and even Iraq. As for the Iraqi debt towards Romania, the state secretary from the Ministry of Finances, Nicolae Ivan, assured us that the negotiations with the new Iraqi Government are very solid and that there are real chances for Romania to get back its 1.7 billion US dollars debt.
Minister Bogdan Olteanu explained that if the sate tried to sell the shares it included in the "Property Fund", the procedure would last for years. Nevertheless, their owners will quickly convert the certificates into money, Olteanu said.