TEL AVIV (EJP)—A Romanian-Israeli businessman and philanthropist, who owned a media company and television station before it went bankrupt and who has been indicted last December by the judicial authorities for alleged fraud and tax evasion, says he is a victim of an anti-Semitic and political smear campaign in Romania.
46-year-old Elan Schwartzenberg, who grew up in an Jewish family of doctors, lived in Romania until last year before moving to Israel and Monaco. He was once married to Romanian tv star Mihaela Radulescu.
A successful businessman active in real estate, advertising and commerce, ranked by local Forbes at 50 million euros, he acquired in May 2011 a news television station Realitatea TV, mostly operating like a local CNN.
Due to his social and charity activities, he was awarded by th Romanian army the rank of Colonel and the highest army medal.
But this ‘’honeymoon’’, he says, ended in 2012 with the political changes in the country.
‘’In 2012, Romania experienced several political changes and in only 12 months I became a real enemy for almost every politician in the country and especially for those in power today,’’ he told the European Jewish Press in Tel Aviv.
Having a long and public history of fighting anti-Semitism in his country, Schwartzenberg opposed a Member of the European Parliament notorious for his anti-Semitic and xenophobic views, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, and Dan Sova, a Minister in the Romanian government who made statements denying that ‘’Jews suffered at the hands of Romanians during the Holocaust’’ while historical evidence shows that Romanians killed tens of thousands of Jews, most notably in the city Iasi from where Schwartzenberg’s family comes from.
‘’Behind closed doors they promised to destroy me’’, says Schwartzenberg who lost control of his tv station in 2012 ‘’when the politicians and the ruling PSD (Social-Democrat) party decided they had enough of me’’ after Realitatea went into volontary insolvency in October 2011.
The former General Manager of the station, Sebastian Ghita, who became a member of the parliament and is a close friend of Prime Minister Victor Ponta, established himself a new TV station, called RTV, a perfect clone of RLT Tv, which Schwartzenberg affirms ‘’operated in my studios and offices, with my technical equipments while I was forced to leave and to loose a significant slice of market share, almost 50% of the regular yearly advertising budget.’’
He continues : ‘’With the abusive help of a judge, they took the control of the company out of my hands and I lost my 20 million euros investment despite a ruling by the superior court of justice in my favor. Moreover, in order to make sure that I will not disturb the hostile takeover of the tv station, the mass media was flooded with articles about penal accusations against me none of them based on real facts.’’
‘’I have never had anything with the penal world,’’ he assured. ‘’They are trying to intimidate me and to accuse me but until now they have no solid proof of the rumors they leak to the media.’’
Schwartzenberg was informed that if he comes back to Romania, he would be jailed. ‘’To make things clear zanti-terror forces broke into the houses of my family in early morning.’’
‘’My nightmare is based on 50% anti-Semitism and the other half being a pure political dirty fight for control on the TV station and financial interests in view of the November general elections in the country,’’ he says.
Schwarzenberg’s name was also linked to the disappearance in 2012 of Codrut Marta, one of his friend and former business partner, who is accused in several criminal offences.
Schwartzenberg’s Israeli lawyer, David Shimron, wrote a letter to the Romanian Chief Prosecutor Laura Cordruta Kovesi, who heads the DNA, the country’s anti-corruption body, asking for a meeting between the Romanian authorities and Schwartzenberg ‘’to bring forward evidence supporting his innocence and to stop the allegations against him’’ but she declined.
The prosecutor couldn’t immediately be reached by EJP for a reaction on Schwartzenberg’s claims.