The adoption of a joint plan of measures for the reorganization of the RADET-ELCEN centralized heating system in Bucharest was postponed after the last meeting of the ELCEN creditors’ committee, on August 7th, found the refusal of the RADET judicial administrator to enforce the decision of the RADET Creditors Committee, in May, on asset restructuring.

On the other hand, Gheorghe Piperea, a representative of RADET’s legal administrator, insolvency firm Rominsolv, claims that a draft amendment to the RADET reorganization plan has been drafted for almost a month. “According to the Insolvency Law, the initial reorganization plan, which was filed in February, cannot be modified until it is voted by the creditors and confirmed by the syndic judge,” says Piperea, quoted by profit.ro.

At the same time, he also said that ELCEN’s reorganization plan presents several failures, and he labeled it as a “fiction”. “The reorganization plan of ELCEN cannot be approved in the current form because it is conditional on the City Hall takes over the responsibility for the payment of the revalued claim of ELCEN on RADET amounting to 1,095 billion lei”, while the High Court of Cassation and Justice decided last year that the responsibility of the historical claim of 3.7 billion lei is on RADET, and not on the City Hall”, said Piperea, for profit.ro.

Creditors are caught in a trap

In Tuesday’s meeting of the ELCEN creditors’ committee, Distrigaz Sud Rețele proposed that if the special administrator of ELCEN and the judicial administrator of RADET do not modify the plan for reorganization of RADET within 30 days, in order to align it with the administrator of the heat producer, “the necessary steps to be taken in order to replace Rominsolv as judicial administrator for good reasons”. Another ELCEN creditor, Transgaz, has even asked for the termination of services to RADET, says adevarul.ro, given that RADET had accumulated additional 125 million lei of debt to ELCEN over the past four months.

The delay threatens the very survival of the system

Even if Parliament adopted the Law of Heating, which includes the introduction of a new cogeneration scheme, the blockage in the reorganization of ELCEN-RADET risks European funding for essential investments in the modernization of production units and the thermal energy transmission network will be lost.

Apparently, there are disagreements between judicial administrator (Rominsolv, RADET) and special administrator (Sierra Quadrant, ELCEN), but adevarul.ro hints to economic interests with political ramifications.