George Simion paid 1 million euros for a day of promotion at Realitatea Plus. INVESTIGATION

On May 12, 2025, Realitatea Plus broadcast several shows, including “Culisele Statului Paralel” produced by Anca Alexandrescu, for which the television received 1 million euros from the AUR, as presidential election advertising. For two more days, AUR paid another 500,000 euros. In total, Realitatea received from AUR George Simion's party only for the presidential elections in the spring of 2025 almost 5 million euros, money for which it requested reimbursement from the budget. AEP refused and sent a complaint to the Prosecutor's Office, investigative website Snoop revealed, citing sources familiar with the invoices between AUR and AEP.

• A calculation shows that, according to the amount of 460,000 euros paid by AUR for the show produced by Anca Alexandrescu, 300 spots could have been broadcast in the two hours at Realitatea Plus, at the price paid by Donald Trump on TV in the USA.
• While the 300 spots broadcast in the USA contained the person and the offer of the candidate Donald Trump and with the advantage over his competitor, on Realitatea Plus George Simion appeared for a few minutes, out of the two hours of broadcast paid for with 460,000 euros.
• Another comparison: in the one-month campaign, AUR gave Realitatea Plus 5 million euros. Donald Trump paid $6 million (€5.5 million) for all of his Facebook advertising in the last three months of the November 2024 US presidential election, according to an independent report by financial firm Solomon.
• Snoop is the site that also discovered the 2 million euros paid, from public money, by the PNL for the billboard promotion of Nicolae Ciucă's book, the president of the PNL and presidential candidate. The same investigative site wrote about the record sums received by PSD and the fact that AEP did not reimburse part of the money to President Nicușor Dan, because some of the donors were not identified.

Six months after the end of the presidential election campaign, when he saw what money he received from the budget, George Simion realized that he was paid an amount much smaller than what was spent. AUR paid 69 million lei for its president and was reimbursed 47 million lei. 22 million lei, AEP claims, were not spent legally.

Part of this sum of 22 million lei was billed by Realitatea Plus television. But AEP claims that the invoices do not attest to an actual service that AUR benefited from. Among the reports considered unreal by AEP is an edition of the May 12, 2025 show by filmmaker Anca Alexandrescu. Alexandrescu became a politician and is an independent candidate for the Capital City Hall, supported by AUR.

George Simion said on Tuesday, November 12, that he will appeal in court the AEP decision regarding the non-reimbursement after the presidential campaign.

The President of the AUR states that AEP's arguments are “made up”. AUR is a target for state institutions, says Simion.

Out of 69 million lei, 33% of the AUR money went to Realitatea Plus

Of the 69 million lei spent by George Simion in the presidential election campaign in the spring of 2025, 23.4 million lei went to the Realitatea Plus television station. Of these 23.4 million lei, AEP decided to recognize only 6 million lei as legal expenses. Thus, AEP refused to settle 17 million lei of public money given by George Simion to Maricel Păcuraru's television.

What did AEP not recognize as legal expenses? For example, on May 12, 2025, for the broadcasts of a single day, Realitatea Plus television received 1 million euros from Simion's party, Snoop.ro quotes sources familiar with the invoices sent by AUR and refused by AEP.

How settlement is made

Candidates who exceeded the 3% threshold in the presidential elections have the right to request reimbursement of the amounts spent in the campaign if the financing was private, that is, it did not come from the initial subsidy received by the party from the state budget.

Parties and candidates benefit from two types of funds from the budget, i.e. collected from citizens' and companies' fees and taxes.

One is the annual amount, which at the AUR is approximately 10 million euros per year. To it, other public funds for the campaign are added, which are settled from the budget, after the politicians or parties come with the contracts and invoices.

The company is DBV Media House

For the presidential campaign in the spring of 2025, the first contract between the Alliance for the Union of Romanians and DBV Media House, the owner of Realitatea Plus, had a value of 9 million lei. The invoice issued by the TV company following the performance stipulated in the contract was dated April 2, 2025. For this money, the Realitatea Plus trust undertook to promote the candidate George Simion.

DBV Media House is owned by PHG Media Invest, a company that belongs to the wife of Realitatea Plus boss, Daniela-Madi Păcuraru. At the address where DBV Media House is headquartered, Maricel Păcuraru's foundation, the owner of Realitatea PLUS, is also headquartered.

“For those in the media and politics, everybody knows that DBV Media House is the PLUS Reality, it's no secret,” a political leader told Snoop.

AUR did not get what it paid for, claims AEP

Realitatea Plus issued invoices for the electoral promotion shows, and AUR paid them according to the declared documents.

But what was billed was not legal, claims the Permanent Electoral Authority, which argues that the amounts paid were not justified by a benefit according to the contract. AUR did not get what it paid for, says AEP.

Realitatea Plus billed the shows entirely as political advertising for Simion, regardless of the topic on the screen

More precisely, AEP found, according to the information obtained by Snoop, that the shows paid for by AUR were shows permanently broadcast by the television station Realitatea PLUS and were not shows whose content was specific to the electoral campaign.

The institution that controls the way money is used in electoral campaigns considered that the topics in the shows were not for the promotion of George Simion, so AUR had no reason to pay them. The topics were diverse: from draft laws, to current topics in the political area, unrelated to Simion's messages.

An edition of “Backstage of the Parallel State” cost George Simion 460,000 euros

The contract for the promotion of George Simion was extended after he enters the second round of the presidential elections in the final with Nicușor Dan. The Alliance for the Union of Romanians paid another bill, of 14.4 million lei, to the Realitatea PLUS trust.

And for the second round, AEP found a similar situation to the first round: the shows were billed in full, regardless of whether George Simion or AUR representatives participate in the shows or not. Any topic on the show was considered promotion for candidate Simion.

For the two voting rounds, Realitatea PLUS invoiced, and AUR paid 17 million lei more than the time in which the Permanent Electoral Authority considered that a legal promotion was made.

The show “Culisele Statului Paralel” from May 12, 2025, moderated by Anca Alexandrescu, holds the financial record: over 450,000 euros for a single edition.

300 spots of Donald Trump cost as much as George Simion paid for Anca Alexandrescu's two hours of broadcasting

According to Snoop, the amount reimbursed by AEP for this show is in the order of thousands of euros, instead of almost half a million euros, what AUR paid to Realitatea Plus.

In the final days of his 2024 re-election campaign, Donald Trump's team spent $18 million on 10,000 spots. It is the equivalent of 1,800 dollars per spot, at US TV prices, which are much higher than in Romania.

A calculation shows that at what AUR paid for the show made by Anca Alexandrescu, 460,000 euros, in the two hours at Realitatea Plus, 300 spots could have been broadcast, at the price paid by Donald Trump in the USA.

The difference is that while the 300 spots in the US were with Donald Trump, George Simion appeared for a few minutes in the two-hour show from Reality Plus.

George Simion said he would challenge the AEP report in court

George Simion declared, on Tuesday, November 12, that he will appeal in court the decision of AEP regarding the non-repayment of 3.5 million euros after the presidential campaign.

The party leader claims that the reasons invoked by the Authority are “invented” and that the AUR is a target for certain state institutions.

“The attacks also target a television station, Realitatea TV, we collaborated with several television stations in 2024, 2025, from all these media bodies we see some decisions openly against the mass media that also present the voice of the opposition,” said the president of AUR.

According to him, he will refer the European and international institutions, including the US State Department, because of the “AEP abuses”.

The sum of 5 million euros, paid by AUR to Realitatea Plus in just one month's campaign, exceeds the total TV advertising budgets of many major companies in Romania in their one-year campaign.

Continuation on Snoop.