Luxury phones paid for with public money: small municipalities spend thousands of lei on expensive gadgets

At the end of the year, several town halls of small communes and other institutions spent tens of thousands of lei of public money for state-of-the-art phones, some of which cost almost as much as an average net salary.

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Luxury phones bought with public money PHOTO: Facebook/ Our money

Ciorăști town hall, from Vrancea county, is an example in this sense. Here, a single state-of-the-art phone cost no less than 6,130 lei, in a commune with approximately 2,700 inhabitants. At the same time, Tarna Mare town hall, from Satu Mare county, purchased eight premium phones, for almost 44,000 lei, according to data from the electronic public procurement system, analyzed by our Money page. The commune has about 3,500 inhabitants.

Public institutions in Bucharest and Cluj invest in expensive phones

It's not just town halls that have opted for expensive devices. The National Mental Health Center in Bucharest spent 39,000 lei for six phones, and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, also from Bucharest, purchased a phone for 4,100 lei during the holidays.

For its part, the University of Medicine in Cluj paid over 8,000 lei for a single phone, choosing a model with 1 terabyte (TB) storage space, which is extremely generous.

The most expensive purchase

The most expensive purchase identified by our Money page was made by the Employment Agency from Calarasi. Here, nine phones were bought less than two weeks after the launch, for a total of 49,000 lei.