The “Asylums of Horror” file. Goda's brothers are free, no court date in two years, seizure expired

The “Horror Asylums” case comes two years after the Godei brothers and 26 other people were sent to court for human trafficking and organized criminal group. The defendants do not yet have a first term on the merits at the Ilfov Court. Currently, they are not subject to any restrictive measure, and the asset seizure was lifted in March, according to G4Media.

The judicial investigation that led to this trial began following a media investigation by the Media and Bulletin Investigation Center of Bucharest, in 2023, about the inhumane conditions in which people with disabilities and the elderly were kept in the asylums in Voluntari, patronized by the Godei brothers. The defendants in this case were sent to trial in 2024.

The file submitted by the prosecutors two years ago has not even received a date for the start of the trial on the merits, leaving all 28 accused free, without restrictions.

The procedure in the preliminary chamber, the stage in which the judge verifies the legality of the indictment and the evidence administered by the prosecutors, has not been completed, although, according to the code of criminal procedure, it lasts a maximum of 60 days from the registration of the case in court.

“No deadline was granted for judging the case on the merits, as the preliminary chamber procedure was not completed, the file has a deadline of 23.04.2026, in order to discuss the requests and exceptions invoked by the defendants”, the Ilfov Court sent.

Proceeding to the actual trial remains conditional on the resolution of these requests, a mandatory step that keeps the file in place.

Also, last month the Bucharest Court of Appeal admitted the appeal filed by five of the indicted from the “Horror Asylums” file, including the two brothers, Ștefan and Daniel, against the decision of the Ilfov Court to maintain the insurance seizure on dozens of properties and large sums of money.

According to the magistrates, there is reason to maintain the protective measure, but there is no longer a legal basis for this.

Old people beaten and starving in asylums in Voluntari and Afumati

The investigation of the DIICOT prosecutors in the file of care centers for the elderly and people with disabilities in Voluntari and Afumați localities revealed, in July 2023, shocking things about how the people hospitalized there were treated.

The searches and the intervention of the authorities, which thus put an end to the torment of some people, came many months after a non-governmental organization, the Center for Legal Resources, notified several institutions about the irregularities it found at the respective centers.

Later, information about this topic also appeared in the articles produced by the Media Investigation Center and the Buletin de București publication.

The former driver of Gabriela Firea, 3.7 million lei earnings from the business with asylums of horror

In July 2023, the DIICOT prosecutors showed that Ștefan Godei, the man who controlled the “Saint Gabriel the Brave” association targeted by the investigation, earned 3.7 million lei from the horror asylums, where the elderly and disabled people were beaten, left hungry, with bubs that made worms, in unimaginable misery.

The Directorates of Social Assistance, including those in Ilfov, Sector 3 and Sector 6, were extorted from almost 4 million lei, money that was supposed to be used for the care and food of the beneficiaries in the centers they controlled, but the prosecutors determined that the people endured unimaginable conditions.

Godei also invested the money in real estate, in the capital and in Ialomita county. Other money went into real estate investments.

“At the same time, it was established that he recently built a house for himself on str. (…), sector 1, Bucharest and owns an agricultural land of 1.5 ha in the village (…), com. (…), Ialomița county”, according to the same source. The investigators determined that between November 2021 and June 2023, the organized criminal group led by Godei collected 3,763,869 lei, and the largest amounts came from DGASPC Sector 3 (2,550,574 lei) and DGASPC Ilfov (1,178,233 lei).

Godei led the “Saint Gabriel the Brave” Association, through which he controlled the business through which he starved people to make a huge profit, where Gabriela Firea's adviser, Ligia Gheorghe (formerly Enache), was the vice-president.

Ligia Gheorghe claimed that she helped Godei to establish the association, but she does not appear as a founding member, and that she resigned in 2022, but a change in the statute of the association was made in 2023. Ligia Gheorghe was called as a witness in the same file. She was an adviser to the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities, led by Gabriela Firea, with whom she worked for many years when Firea worked at Intact Media Group, which controls Antenele.

Firea resigned from the Government after the outbreak of the scandal

Although Gabriela Firea repeatedly denied that she did not know Ștefan Godei, who ran the NGO that managed the horror asylums in Voluntari, he appeared employed at the senatorial cabinet where he collected 3,000 lei each month, in the years 2022 and 2023. The last salary collected on the payroll from the upper house of the Parliament was at the end of February, more precisely on February 27 2023, according to g4media and g4media.

Also, Ștefan Godei, the former president of the Association Sfântul Gabriel cel Viteaz, which owned the asylums in Voluntari where the elderly and disabled patients were subjected to unimaginable abuses, worked at the Capital City Hall from July 1, 2016 to December 1, 2021, wrote Buletin de Bucharest. Basically, Godei was hired a week after the swearing in by the former mayor general Gabriela Firea.

After DIICOT opened a criminal case and made several searches, in response to the journalistic investigation of the Center for Media Investigations and Buletin de Bucharest regarding the horror asylums in Voluntari, where elderly and disabled people were subjected to inhumane treatments, those who administered the asylums having connections with close relatives of Gabriela Firea, both Firea, at that time Minister of the Family, and Marius Budai, Minister of Labor, were forced to resign. Firea suspended himself from the leadership positions held in the party.