INVESTIGAȚIE RECORDER. Drumurile și hoția: cum se fură la asfaltările din PNDL

In February, Recorder published an investigation entitled "The God of Acquisitions", unfolding part of what appears to be the biggest theft in the recent history of Romania: the National Programme for Local Development, established by Liviu Dragnea and financed with 10 billion euros from the national budget. In the meanwhile, we have been travelling through the country to portray the real dimensions of this business. Half of those 10 billion euros went to asphalting communal roads: 4000 objectives of investments were spread throughout the country, but concentrated mainly in the Southern part of the country, where the Social Democrat Party has the most mayors and where the party firms seem to prosper. We have found asphalt works where the asphalt was laid directly on the ground, in order for the money designated for materials to remain in the hands of the constructors; we have found firms run by relatives or friends of certain ministers from the Social Democrat Party, which received funding from the Government and left behind roads that were destroyed at first frost; we have found roads asphalted through PNDL twice, without anyone raising any concerns about that; we have found mayors who insist on building roads with the same firms that had a lousy performance of previous contracts; we have found a megalomaniac programme, which wastes huge amounts of money, without even having any clear control mechanisms. It is a true paradise of the shifty mayors and of the politically affiliated businessmen. And above all, the PNDL praised by Liviu Dragnea at every electoral meeting made the mayors abandon the absorption of EU funds to concentrate on the much more accessible money coming from the Government. No bureacracy, no strict conditions to be met and above all, no inspections. Not only did we lose those billions of euros wasted on low quality works, we also lost the money we could have had access to through European funds. An investigation by Alex Nedea and David Muntean ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recorder is an online publication initiated by a team of journalists based on the following principles: honest journalism, made with passion, in order to perform a public service. You can show your support for our project by donating here https://recorder.ro/sustine/ sau aici www.patreon.com/recorder More videos made by us can be seen on: our website: https://www.recorder.ro our Facebook page:   / myrecorder   our Instagram account:   / recorder.ro