The High Court ordered the preventive arrest of the daughter of the businessman Ioan Crişan, killed in Arad in the explosion of his car, as well as of two alleged accomplices of the woman. The three were taken into custody by the police.
Laura Oana Bîlcea was remanded in custody Photo: Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea
The High Court of Cassation and Justice (ÎCCJ) admitted yesterday the preventive arrest of Laura Oana Bîlcea (formerly Crișan), daughter of businessman Ioan Crișan, murdered in Arad, and of two other people, Sebastian Ilie Bulbuc and Adrian Bogdan Horodincă. The two would have helped her carry out her sinister plan to kill her father. The judges’ decision is final.
Ioan Crişan died on May 29, 2021, in a bomb attack in Arad. Three and a half years later, his daughter and two other men were arrested and charged with his death.
The judges show, in their reasoning, that there is sufficient evidence to support the accusations made by the prosecutors and they accepted their request, although, in the first instance, the Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected the measure of preventive arrest and let the defendants go free.
“Adevărul” consulted the reasoning of the ÎCCJ judges and presents the reasons that led them to order the preventive arrest measure against the three defendants.
The judges claim that there was more tension between father and daughter. Ioan Crișan considered his daughter incapable of managing his affairs.
“These tensions arose as a result of the failure of the defendant Bîlcea Laura Oana to practice both the profession of lawyer and to manage the various companies that were established in consideration of her person by her father or to effectively involve herself in the companies owned by the victim Crisan Ioan“, it is mentioned in the reasoning of the High Court.
And the investigators have as evidence several statements provided by people close to the two.
According to the statements of the witnesses in the case, the father was unhappy that his daughter “he did not carry out any activity that would bring him constant income, although he has the capacity of a lawyer in the Arad Bar“. All current expenses of the daughter and those related to the maintenance of the building where she lived with the two minor children were borne by Ioan Crisan.
A witness told investigators that “the defendant wanted to sell the house in which they lived, as it seemed to her that there was too much work to do with it, but she could not because it was not in her name”. In her obsession with the idea of escaping the house, the woman allegedly told a friend “that they intend to set it on fire”, but eventually gave up doing so.
Laura Oana Bîlcea wanted to move from her house to an apartment, but she did not have the money to buy a property, “ibut his father would not have bought him, since he had given him a house“. The woman’s friends say that she received from her father “2,000 euros per month for his and the children’s maintenance, which, however, was insufficient“.
“The probation administered in the case reveals serious mutual tensions and dissatisfactions between father and daughter, on all levels, both personal and professional and business activities and the extreme desire of the defendant to manage her personal, professional and business life on her own without constraints and directions imposed by his father and to dispose of all the resources that belonged to him“, say the judges in their reasoning.
Who did Ioan Crișan want to leave his business to?
Ioan Crisan, concerned in recent years about the future of his business in the context of his advancing age, was dissatisfied with the fact that he could not rely on his daughter in order to take over the management of his companies in the future. For this reason, the businessman planned to contact his former son-in-law Sergiu Bîlcea, a member of the Romanian Parliament, to propose that he gradually take over the management of his businesses, in order to ensure the future of his grandchildren.
“The information was of a nature to produce the defendant Bîlcea Laura-Oana a strong feeling of frustration, given that her relationship with her ex-husband ended with deep conflict situations, which were fueled in the period following the divorce“, the prosecutors claim in the preventive arrest report.
Also, Laura’s father expressed his desire for his granddaughter to take over his companies, to be gradually introduced by her grandfather into the issues of his business, considering the inabilities found in his daughter.
“The sale, shortly after the death of Crisan Ioan, of some properties from the wealth accumulated by him, disregarding the victim’s desire to leave one of the properties – specifically designated – to each of the grandchildren, denotes disinterest in the parent’s wishes and outlines the material interest , as an element of the motive for committing the act and as an aggravating factor of the crime against life“, the prosecutors claim.
The price paid to blow up his father
Laura Oana Bîlcea, the daughter of the millionaire killed in the bomb attack in Arad, allegedly paid 100,000 euros for her father’s murder.
The prosecutors show in the pre-trial detention report that, on June 9, 2021, the woman withdrew from the bank, based on the heir’s certificate, from the account that belonged to her father, the sum of 101,440 euros in cash.
Although the defendant claims that “from the cash withdrawals he would have credited the company and would have paid a large amount of money for the authorization of the thermal water well on the company’s land“, the expense would not be real, being rejected even by the company’s employees.
The High Court retains the significant cash withdrawals made by the defendant Bîlcea Laura Oana, after the death of her father, but also “the unbelievable or unreal explanations regarding how she spent those sums of money”. “Attitude which, in the context of the evidence administered and analyzed up to this procedural moment, creates the reasonable suspicion that part of the sums of money withdrawn were given to the two defendants”, says the High Court.
“The acts were committed out of material interest”
On May 29, 2021, Ioan Crișan left home at 06:43, driving his car. He went to a cafe, located in the parking lot of a supermarket in the Vlaicu district of Arad. Shortly after starting the car, close to 7:00, his car was detonated.
“The victim died as a result of the explosion and subsequent fire, and the car was completely destroyed. Through the manner, place and means of commission, the deed was likely to endanger other persons and property”. prosecutors say.
The judges held that “the defendants Bulbuc Sebastian Ilie and Horodincă Adrian Bogdan procured a mechanism as a detonator for an improvised explosive device, in which they incorporated the explosive charge – procured, possessed, transported and used without right and placed it in the victim’s car“.
Later, the two defendants “lon May 29, 2021, 06:59, acting with premeditation, they detonated it from a distance while the victim was driving the car in a parking lot, causing his death“.
“The acts were committed out of material interest, at the instigation of the defendant Bîlcea Laura-Oana. As a result of the explosion and subsequent fire, the car was completely destroyed and by the way, place and means of commission, the deed was likely to endanger other people and property“, say the judges, in motivation.
“The defendants acted recklessly and extremely dangerously”
The High Court notes that “the three defendants do not seem to have psychological barriers that would allow them to censor their conduct“.
The judges held “that the defendants acted without reservations and extremely dangerously“.
“In the case, the actions of the defendants were particularly serious, and their release would lead to encouraging the adoption of such behaviors by other people, thus justifying the taking of the most severe preventive measure depriving them of liberty“, according to the reasoning of the court.
On October 24, 2024, the judge of rights and freedoms of the Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected the proposal of preventive arrest against the three persons. It was considered that “there is no solid evidence or evidence from which there is a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a crime“.
“Regarding the fact that the defendants Bulbuc Sebastian Ilie and Horodincă Adrian Bogdan were allegedly instigated to commit the act by the defendant Bîlcea Laura Oana out of material interest, as an element of the motive for committing the crime, the judge of rights and liberties of the Court found that neither circumstance is not proven in the case”, it is stated in the motivation.
The prosecutors appealed, and the case was tried at the High Court of Cassation and Justice, which ordered, on November 13, the preventive arrest of the three defendants.
