EXCLUSIVE: How the National Agency for Cadastre lost 200 million euros on a rural property registration project / Despite this, hundreds of project team members received monthly bonuses of 1,000 euros for five years / Prime Minister Ciolacu has dispatched Control Body

In its response to G4Media.ro regarding delays, ANCPI lists several reasons, including a four-year delay caused by the lengthy approval process by the European Commission, which shortened the implementation period from eight years to just four years and three months. Other cited issues include the flawed application/incompletion of property restitution laws, the unfinished process of re-establishing ownership rights over non-cooperative lands, the absence of parcel plans in cooperative areas, significant land fragmentation, poor delineation of state-owned property, difficult access in hilly and mountainous areas, and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

„The progress of systematic registration works was influenced by factors beyond the control of the implementing authority, as well as the complex and multidisciplinary nature of systematic registration and the involvement of multiple entities not subordinate to each other: municipalities, territorial offices, contractors, citizens, authorities, and public institutions, which also caused significant blockages in activity,” concluded ANCPI in its response to G4Media.ro.

„Inspectors are mocking us. It takes months to check the documents, not ten days,” said a representative of a company that signed contracts with the Agency to perform these types of works within the project and deliver them to the county cadastral offices at the end. „The blame largely lies with the inspectors from the documentation evaluation commissions at the county offices. They are mocking us. Normally, they should check the cadastral documents we submit in about 10 days, but it takes months. ‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ an inspector snapped at me recently. Secondly, there is no uniform standard of checks—what is approved in one place is rejected in another. The lack of political will also played a role, with non-involvement by decision-makers at the county level. Or, in some cases, politics interferes, as I identified a situation in a commune where 80 hectares were not handed over and were at the disposal of the mayor who did not want them registered. There were also cases where companies took on too much work and were overwhelmed. Stupidity, ignorance, poor management, a poorly designed project from the start, it had no consistency, quality, and continuity.”

Despite these issues, the management team in Bucharest, led by engineers Ileana Spiroiu (project director) and Victor Grigorescu (deputy), as well as members of the regional teams, continually received bonuses that could amount to about 4,000-5,000 RON monthly, as revealed by a G4Media.ro source from within ANCPI.

These sums are in addition to the base salary and other bonuses stipulated in the collective labor contract. „From the territorial offices, only a few people, up to ten from each office, receive the monthly project bonus, of which surely 75% work. But the 40-50 people at the central level, of whom at most 25% work, why do they receive the money?” rhetorically asked the G4Media.ro source from within the Agency, adding that the project teams received this bonus even in the first months of 2024, although the POR project ended on December 31, 2023.

Panic among ANCPI officials

In the context of receiving these bonuses and failing to meet the objective, a crisis situation has arisen within ANCPI, as recently revealed by the G4Media source inside the institution: „The Management Authority notified ANCPI that if they do not urgently register 100,000 hectares to at least reach 1,700,000 hectares out of the 5,700,000, they will receive a correction from Brussels in May, and those who received salaries from the project will have to return them. It’s about 1,000 euros per month per person, for about five years (approximately). The deadline given is 30 days. Yesterday, the project manager sent an email to the cadastral offices and contracting firms, ‘threatening’ them with this matter so they wouldn’t have to return the money. There’s great desperation at the Agency.”

Regarding the payment of these bonuses, ANCPI communicated to G4Media.ro that „the state budget was not harmed by the payment of such bonuses.”

Who profits from the „cadastre business”

Another source told G4Media.ro that the reason why the cadastral offices in the country obstruct the registration process is the cadastral business conducted by the heads of these institutions, either directly or through intermediaries. They own companies that perform cadastral services at high prices (several thousand lei), while cadastral registration funded by European funds has reduced the cost of this service to a few hundred lei.

The National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (ANCPI) is currently led by the liberal Laurentiu Blaga (originally from Alba Iulia). He was also the general director of the Agency from 2020-2021, appointed by former Prime Minister Ludovic Orban.

Despite all the difficulties so far, ANCPI has communicated to G4Media.ro that the National Cadastre and Land Registration Program will continue until the systematic registration of properties across the entire country is completed, which was estimated at one point to involve about 40 million properties (lands and buildings) and of which fewer than 20% were registered by 2015.

The major problem is that no deadline has been set for the completion of this campaign, given that only a few hundred out of the 3,181 administrative-territorial units have completed their cadastrations. Moreover, from the contracting of systematic registration services to the actual registration of all properties, it takes, on average, between two and three years, according to a specialist within ANCPI.