How 15 kilograms of gold disappeared from the hands of the police in Constanța. A local businessman argues that the gold confiscated from him was replaced with tin, beads and monks.
The owner of several pawnshops in Constanța accuses police and officials of the state of replacing 15 kilograms of gold confiscated 19 years ago with beads, pebbles and gabons.
For almost 19 years, Virgil Dulcea has been trying to recover his confiscated gold. Photo: Archive
It all started in September 2007, when dozens of police officers and commissioners of the Financial Guard descended simultaneously in the 12 work points and at Virgil Dulea's central office, owner of several pawnshops in Constanța. The operation was triggered on the basis of suspicions of tax evasion, and following the searches the authorities confiscated over 130 kilograms of gold, jewelry and other valuables.
According to the minutes drawn up at that time, each jewel was weighed, measured and recorded in detail. However, Delinea states that, since the operation, the goods have been suspiciously manipulated by the police.
“From time to time there was a policeman, he took a bag, took him to the police … What they did there are not known and took him back. Explained Virgil Dulea, the owner of the pawnshop.
Instead of gold, gablons, pebbles, beads and monks' wooden wood
Subsequently, the businessman was permanently acquitted by both courts, and the judges ordered the return of the confiscated gold.
After 19 years, Virgil Dulcea continues to receive most of the quantity, except for the 15 missing kilograms, which, according to him, “It is now located at the Chamber of Delicles of the Constanța County Police Inspectorate.” He states that he refused to lift them, being convinced that instead of gold are “the beads, the pebbles and the tinless tin”.
The businessman said he refused to raise the respective bags because the content does not match the confiscated goods in 2007. Instead of gold, he would have found “beads, pebbles and different objects”, according to his own statements.
“Are they now deposited at the Chamber of Delicles from the Constanta County Police Inspectorate, because I refused to raise them. 15 kg of gold or 15 kg of beads and pebbles?”, he supports.
“The core of the case is that the policemen after lifting about 140 kg of jewelry, which they previously inventoryed by description and weighing piece by piece, stole 15 kg of jewelry they replaced with 15 kg of tin (gablons, glass, stones, wooden, wood, etc. Keep in mind that a comparison could be made that the tin is not from the high jewelry !! Virgil Dulcea wrote on his blog in September.
Objects do not match the inventory
Virgil Dulea made criminal complaints and notifications to all state institutions, demanding the return of gold, evaluated at that time to almost half a million euros.
Following the checks carried out, none of the returned objects corresponded to the initially inventory.
“The 15 kg of tinons are not found as a description and weight as part of those raised by the police, resulting that the tinnites were introduced after the gold objects were raised from the owner during the 10 months in which they handled them without complying with the related laws, in order to mask the one with the one! Good faith ”, writes the businessman from Constanta.
The accused policeman was acquitted
After almost 15 years of approaches, in 2022, the National Anticorruption Directorate and the General Anticorruption Directorate sent the officer who coordinated the 2007 searches, accused of replacing the precious metal jewelry with 15 kilograms of beads, river pebbles, hair clips and other gabons. However, the businessman is convinced that he did not act alone.
“They manipulated the gold, walked him, gave him from one to the other. From the statements of the police officers resulted in this, from the documents drawn up. said Virgil Dulcea at a television station.
Another anomaly discovered by the investigators was that the confiscated gold was not kept at the Treasury of the National Bank, but at a private bank in Constanța, where the director would have been the wife of one of the police involved in case.
“They took it and sold it, they divided each other. They sold, they sweetened from money”,
he accuses.
In 2023, the Constanta Court ceased the criminal trial on the grounds that the facts were prescribed, which meant that the accused policeman escaped the punishment.
“It has been prescribed. They escaped prison in other words. But, the civil side remains. That is, their obligation to compensate me,” to say the businessman from Constanţa.
After 11 postponement terms, the judge recently rejected the request to restore the gold, but Delinea said he would continue to fight in court.
He announced that he was going to open actions against the Constanta Police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, accusing an institutional network that covered the robbery for 19 years.
