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A local arm of Romania’s Ministry of Investments and European Projects is expected to move offices after an investigation by Public Record revealed that it pays 15,000 euros in rent each month.
The Romanian Government published a decision on October 9, stating that it would provide a state-owned building to house the ministry’s southeastern regional headquarters in Brăila, a small city near the borders of Moldova and Ukraine.
The move should save the government 720,000 euros ($836,330) from 2026 through 2029, the remaining four years on the five-year lease. The offices will now be housed in a government-owned building for free.
“The transfer of this property… will achieve a budgetary saving by eliminating the payment of the respective rent,” the Romanian government said in its decision.
The government’s decision came just over a month after Public Record, an OCCRP member center in Romania, reported on the exorbitant rental fees.
The report prompted Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate to enact the initial stage of a criminal investigation. The directorate told Public Record that it had begun “establishing the procedural framework in which the first evidence can be collected regarding a possible criminal act.”
“No person has the status of suspect or defendant at this time,” the directorate added.
Public Record was unable to determine why the southeastern branch of the Ministry of Investments and European Projects agreed to pay monthly rent of 15,000 euros ($17,424). Reporters found that one of the owners of the building rented to the local branch of the ministry had let out a similarly-sized building in the same city for about half that amount.
Dragoș Pâslaru, Minister of Investments and European Projects, did not respond to questions about the amount of rent the southeastern branch had agreed to pay. Pâslaru declined to comment on the government’s October 9 decision to provide rent free space to the branch.
Romania has one of the lowest GDP rates per capita in the European Union, with 13,100 euros per person ($15,217), compared to an average of 33,620 euros ($39,052) across the EU.
