The scent of the PSD government: the seizure on Nordis's Mamaia apartments lifted

With a final ruling, the Bucharest Court of Appeal lifted the seizure imposed in the Nordis case on the company group's apartments in Mamaia, worth more than 100 million euros. At its session on October 14, the court upheld the objection filed by Nordis Management and Nordis Mamaia against a July 21 decision of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), which had maintained the asset-freezing measures affecting the two companies' property. The objection filed by one of the group's owners, Vladimir Ciorbă, was, however, deemed unfounded by the court and rejected, so the seizure of his personal assets remains in place. The ruling is final and cannot be appealed. The decision came in the same week that the PSD—whose chairman, Sorin Grindeanu, has been linked to the Nordis scandal for years—is preparing to enter government with eleven ministers in the Niculescu cabinet.

According to DIICOT, Nordis sold apartments that it never built and never handed over to buyers. So far, about 700 complaints have been filed in the case, 850 people are listed as victims, and prosecutors estimate the damage at 75 million euros. According to the indictment, the company group collected 195 million euros from apartment buyers and embezzled more than 70 million euros. DIICOT has also previously stated that Ciorbă and his wife, former PSD lawmaker Laura Vicol, spent about 1.5 million euros of the company's money on private jet and helicopter trips—including to Nice, Mykonos, Madrid, Paris and the Danube Delta—and spent nearly 5 million euros on luxury cars, including a Ferrari, a Bentley and a Rolls-Royce.

The owners and executives of Nordis were taken into custody in February 2025 on suspicion of forming an organized crime group, aggravated breach of trust, money laundering, tax evasion and fraud. At the time, DIICOT seized 201 apartments and houses, five commercial premises, 22 plots of land, 11 cars, company shares and stakes, and froze 48 bank accounts. The assets have been the subject of almost constant litigation ever since. In August 2025, Judge Florina Rizescu lifted a seizure worth nearly 90 million euros, including on the Nordis hotel in Mamaia, as well as hundreds of apartments and plots of land. That same month, the Court of Appeal also lifted the judicial supervision order on Vladimir Ciorbă and the Poștoacă brothers. Prosecutors then expanded the investigation based on 231 new complaints, with additional damages of 28.5 million euros, and once again placed all of the two companies' apartments and plots of land under seizure—only for Judge Cosmin Leancă to lift it again on November 14. The current ruling thus marks at least the third time the court has taken out of the prosecution's hands the assets from which some of the victims could recover their money.

The case has had a political dimension from the start: in 2022, former Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and PSD politicians Sorin Grindeanu and Alfred Simonis traveled on private jets rented by Nordis to Formula 1 and football matches in Monaco, France and Spain. Grindeanu claims he paid for his own share, that he has receipts, and that he never had a business relationship with Nordis. G4Media, however, revealed that Grindeanu's villa in Timișoara was designed by a company that operated under the name Nordis Arhitectură until 2022 and belongs to the same ownership circle as the Nordis group; the PSD chairman explained this by saying it was the contractors' decision. Some of the victims have filed a complaint with the National Anticorruption Directorate against Ciolacu and Grindeanu, arguing that PSD leaders used their political influence to protect the company group. This week, during a debate, USR Environment Minister Diana Buzoianu referred to Grindeanu as "Mr. Nordis."

The decision has reignited the debate over the efficiency of Romanian justice. Last year, former Justice Minister Stelian Ion already accused the Bucharest Court of Appeal of effectively rewriting criminal procedure law through its reasoning for lifting the seizure, and accused the Prosecutor General's Office of failing to provide DIICOT with the resources needed for financial and accounting expert assessments. DIICOT rejected the accusations at the time, saying the investigation was progressing quickly, with a case file running to four hundred volumes and around two thousand people questioned. Nearly two years after the arrests, however, there is still no indictment, the apartments in Mamaia are once again freely available, and the victims are still waiting to get their money back.

Ugar