The billionaire Sorin Vișinescu, known as the “king of duty-frees”, is building the Satina Park residential complex in Craiova, whose nine-story blocks would block the operation of a military radar, according to the Ministry of Defense, Radu Miruță.
The blocks, built by Satina Park SRL, have nine floors each and are part of a larger complex. The Ministry of Defense stated that initially it issued a negative opinion, but after three weeks it was changed to a favorable one, allowing the work to continue.
“Bthe place is already built, raised to the level of structure. It does not respect either the legal distance from ammunition depots or the height regime. (…)There is a military radar that can no longer sweep the entire spectrum, because the beam hits a certain sector of the circle, this building that has been erected“, said the Minister of Defense, Radu Miruță, in a press conference.
The mayor of Craiova, Lia Olguța Vasilescu, rejected the accusations of blocking the radar and pointed out that the area already includes 10-storey blocks of flats and supermarkets.
“Right next to Chinatown, where the construction of blocks of flats began on land that belonged to MApN and which was given by government decision to the city hall for 10-story blocks. Well, if MApN gave land near Satina Park for the construction of 10-story blocks, couldn’t 9-story Satina be built as well?” wrote Vasilescu on Facebook.
The Satina Park complex is built by Satina Park SRL, where Sorin Vișinescu owns 65% and Marian Prioteasa 35%. Administrator is Daniel Lazar. Sorin Vișinescu, about 70 years old, is a controversial businessman with businesses in Bucharest, Craiova and Constanța, writes G4media.
Sorin Vișinescu, involved in numerous real estate transactions
According to the cited publication, over time, he would have been involved in numerous real estate transactions and commercial businesses, some of which were considered questionable.
Vișinescu was nicknamed “the king of duty-frees” after he operated networks of duty-free shops at border crossing points in Romania, functioning unhindered during several post-December governments, until the country’s accession to the European Union.
The quoted publication claims that his name appears in several scandals related to the confiscation of heritage, dubious retrocessions and acquisitions of disputed land, including retroceded lands in the center of Craiova and in Bucharest, such as Pădurea Băneasa or orchards in Popești-Leordeni.
He is considered close to the PNL led by Călin Popescu Tăriceanu and would have received a natural gas and crude oil field in Bacău in 2007, estimated at 133 million cubic meters of gas and 423,000 tons of crude oil.
In 2008, Vișinescu allegedly signed a lease agreement with the Romanian state for part of the Sahia Film building in Bucharest, and later tried to take over Sahia-related properties through his companies and intermediaries.
He would also have bought from Prince Paul of Romania a plot of land in the Primaveri district for 100,000 euros, although its value was estimated at 2.5 million euros.
The billionaire’s mother would have run a duty-free store in Mamaia during the communist period and had business connections with influential people in the Romanian commercial environment, including the Popoviciu and Dimofte families.
