Romania spent five million euros without obtaining any tangible result for Hydro Tarniţa project, says Energy Minister Victor Grigorescu.

“We agreed to propose inclusively the suspension of that procedure,” says Grigorescu in a Hotnews.ro interview, reffering to the share capital increase.

“We spent five million euros years ago without much gain. We made an assessment at the Ministry of Energy and we decided to propose inclusively the suspension of that procedure, the decision was to analyse, to exhaust virtually all possible means we had available to see if it leads somewhere, if it’s viable and may lead to completion of this project. Soon we will draw a conclusion about that, but one thing is certain: we, for example, opposed to these companies’ share capital increases,” said Grigorescu.

He argues that there is a report of the Court of Control that was sent to relevant institutions, which “shows at least the suspicion of money management deficiencies and in the general management of the company.”

“SAPE is a shareholder in Hydro Tarniţa and I asked them a very careful analysis of the manner in which Hidrotarnita has fulfilled obligations. We haven’t made this capital increase and we requested the Company (SAPE) to manage its activity with the means it has available at the moment,” said the Energy Minister.

“I do not know if Tarniţa itself, the idea of accumulation pumping is something feasible or not, it could be. All I can say at the moment is that way we spent the money, how we handled this process – is extremely rigorous. If the idea itself is one right or wrong…it may be that the evaluation we are doing now to prove it right, in the Energy Strategy. But clearly, the procedure that we used up to this the moment seems to be ineffective.”