What does ANRE answer after the accusations that it intentionally lost a 100 million lei lawsuit

A former vice president of the institution helped throughout the Nova Power & Gas process, claims the Energy Regulatory Authority.

• In European countries, there are institutions specifically designated to check that those who have worked in key positions in various state institutions cannot go into the private sphere and use their relationships or information.
• The National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) claims that the process was lost without any intention and that the contrary information comes from employees who want to hit the “credibility of those who have undertaken the transformation and reorganization” and who want to eliminate “privileges”.

In February 2024, ANRE announced the application of the largest sanction in the history of the energy market in Romania: total fines of 537 million lei for four traders, Nova Power & Gas, Tinmar Energy, EFT Furnizare and Freepoint Commodities, accused of market manipulation.

The case was lost by the Authority

Nova Power & Gas received a fine of 100 million lei, contested decision. It ended up in court. In the fall of 2025, the case was definitively lost by ANRE. “The trial was lost in a premeditated manner, following the application of the defense strategy established at the management level. The legal department of ANRE made a criminal complaint to the DNA,” wrote HotNews.

The editors asked ANRE management for a point of view. The authority did not respond.

After the publication, ANRE sent HotNews a point of view in which it claims that over 90% of the solutions pronounced by the court are favorable to ANRE, with the consequence of paying the fines by the economic operators.

The Authority's argument: “If ANRE had wanted to advantage an economic operator, then it should not have sanctioned it from the very beginning”

“ANRE firmly rejects the insinuations and accusations that it “intentionally” and “premeditated” lost any lawsuit. If ANRE wanted to advantage an economic operator, then it would not have sanctioned it from the very beginning. Therefore, no interest of the institution in losing lawsuits in court can be mentioned.”

ANRE claims that it has exhausted all avenues of appeal. “If our institution had a strategy to defend the interests of an operator in the market, then it would not have imposed fines of over half a billion lei in 2024. Moreover, it is at least absurd to insinuate that ANRE would have intentionally lost a trial, especially when our institution used, until exhaustion, all possible appeals under the law to defend, as is natural, the decision issued in the Nova case Power&Gas”.

“ANRE defended itself in court, at every level – Court/Tribunal, Court of Appeal/High Court of Cassation and Justice, formulating objections, written notes, written conclusions, appeal and appeal and being represented at all court dates. If it had been a question of self-sabotage and non-combat with any fined company, ANRE would not have raised objections or exercised the means of appeal”, added ANRE.

ANRE: A former vice president of the institution helped Nova Power & Gas

ANRE presented a chronology of the litigation with Nova Power & Gas which also shows that:

“The first court term was set on 22.05.2024; A few days before this term, the plaintiff submitted a specialist opinion regarding the non-existence of the fact of market manipulation, drawn up by Zoltan Bege Nagy, former vice-president of ANRE and Prof. Ovidiu Podaru – legal opinion regarding the retroactivity of the application of the Procedure”.

In other words, a former vice president filed an opinion against the very institution he worked for from 2009 until the summer of 2023. Zoltan Bege Nagy worked at the Authority for 16 years until June 2023, being the vice president of the institution.

From ANRE he went to work directly for energy suppliers, i.e. those regulated by the authority, possessing information accumulated during the 16 years he worked here. Bege became a director in the trading company CIGA Energy.

In June 2024, Zoltan Bege Nagy denied having testified against ANRE. “I was not heard, and I did not testify either against ANRE or in favor of the plaintiffs,” he wrote on his Facebook account.

In France, for example, there is the Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (HATVP), an institution that ensures that those who leave important public positions cannot take up positions in the private market that present a conflict of interest with the time they worked for the state.

There are two processes, one is ongoing

ANRE specifies that in the case of Nova Power&Gas there are 2 disputes, one regarding the decision of the Regulatory Committee to complete the investigation and the other regarding the cancellation of the Verbal Process for Finding and Sanctioning the Contravention. The first dispute is settled definitively, and the second dispute is pending before the court, without a final decision being made.

They asked the legal advisers

ANRE claims that “all legal advisers in ANRE deny the information according to which there is a criminal complaint regarding the dispute between the institution and Nova Power&Gas”.

However, a document consulted by HotNews shows that ANRE president George Niculescu and vice president Gabriel Andronache were notified on December 11 about the approach regarding the criminal complaint.

ANRE claims that “it is the right of every employee to report what they consider incorrect and to bring evidence to support the accusations made, as is natural in any organization”. “However, we will not be intimidated by threats of criminal complaints or reports, especially in the context of the current reorganization of ANRE, which we will complete”, added ANRE.

ANRE: “It is the first time that resistance to change reaches these heights”

ANRE attributes the information published by HotNews, “delivered to the press from within ANRE”, to the fact that the current management wants to eliminate privileges and carry out the “reorganization objectives established by the Bolojan Cabinet by hiring responsibility”.

“We have to be honest. The context in which this topic appears is one of transformation and reorganization of ANRE, including salary reductions. It is not the first time since the current management took over the mandate that a set of privileges is about to be eliminated, but it is the first time that the resistance to change has reached these levels,” reads the point of view sent by ANRE.

“It is very likely that actions such as providing false information to the media or publishing information not intended for publicity, from within ANRE, will be used by certain people to put pressure and hit the credibility of those who undertook this transformation and reorganization, the final goal being to guide ANRE's reorganization measures in a direction favorable to them,” ANRE states.