While Romanian Communications Minister (PNL) Burduja (Jr.) was arguing for the “freedom in the West vs. the Russian chains” from the floor of Parliament, his Father, Burduja (Sr.) held the Directorship of ALRO SA, an aluminium producer controlled by a Russian oligarch.” How Marinel Burduja became director of ALRO SA, the largest producer of aluminum in Romania 

Marinel Burduja, the father of Communications Minister Sebastian Burduja, has been a member since 2019 of the Board of Directors of ALRO SA, Romania’s largest aluminium producer. He was nominated and voted in by the majority shareholder, a company controlled at the time by Russian oligarch Vitali Machitsky. Asked by G4Media how he accepted to work for a Russian oligarch, Marinel Burduja said he did not know that ALRO was controlled by him, although the information was official, public and well known.

Marinel Burduja, a former vice-president of Bancorex bank, which was looted in the 1990s after granting hundreds of preferential loans to former communist security employees, was proposed in April 2019 as a member of ALRO’s Board of Directors by Marian Daniel Năstase, the chairman of the Board installed with the votes of majority shareholder Vimetco, according to the company’s website.

Vimetco was at that time „controlled by a family trust fund with the Machitski family as beneficiaries,” according to a 2018 public document from ALRO, assumed by the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF).

After Marinel Burduja was proposed as a member of the Board of Directors, he was voted in the general meeting of shareholders also in 2019. He could not be appointed to the position without the vote of the majority shareholder, i.e. the Machitski family.

Vitali Machitski (69) is a Russian oligarch with aluminium business. According to an OCCRP investigation, Machitski made his fortune in the early 1990s – a period when many Russian companies were privatised. A former civil servant, he worked in timber, oil, gas and natural resources before going into business himself in 1989. He managed to acquire large oil and gas resources and then became rich by selling them to oil giant Yukos.

He has been friends since his youth with former KGB General Sergei Chemezov, the executive director of ROSTEC, the Kremlin’s military complex that also produces the weapons with which Ukrainian cities are now being attacked. Chemezov is, in turn, an old comrade in Soviet espionage with Vladimir Putin, the supreme leader in Moscow, according to Rise Project.

Asked by G4Media why he accepted to be nominated as a director of the company at the proposal of the Machitsky family, which in 2019 controlled ALRO, Marinel Burduja said that „you don’t have the correct information, the Machitsky family does not control the company”. After the G4Media reporter pointed out that there was public and well-known information proving this, Marinel Burduja said that „I was not nominated by the Machitski family, I don’t know anyone from this family, it was an independent candidacy. I repeat, I do not have any information that this company is controlled by a group of a Russian oligarch. I know ALRO from many transactions in my professional history, it has always behaved correctly”.

At the insistence of the G4Media reporter, who pointed out that such an answer insults the readers’ intelligence, given that the information on ALRO’s shareholding was public at the time, Marinel Burduja said that „I do not know any member of the Machitsky family. I have never seen Pavel Machitski (son of oligarch Vitali Machitski, member of ALRO’s Board of Directors at the same time as Marinel Burduja – editor’s note) in my life, I only heard him on the phone during some board meetings”.

Asked by G4Media reporter if he has any ethical dilemma about working for a Russian oligarch, when his son, Minister Sebastian Burduja, warned in 2022 that Romania must choose between the chains of Russia and the freedom of the West, Marinel Burduja said that „you have no reason to make accusatory statements against me”.

Sebastian Burduja, the current communications minister, said in a speech in parliament on 9 February 2022 that Romania must choose between Russia and the West.

„The tactics of Putin’s Russia today are the tactics of the Soviet Union .. from the 1950s, whereby they aim at two things. The first is to generate division within the West. The second thing is to alienate citizens from their democratic systems, to lose their trust in state institutions – which some are doing, with great success, including in our country. What will we choose, East or West? Freedom, in the West, or the chains in the East, which we have known for decades in this country.”

Marinel Burduja’s résumé. Marinel Burduja, father of Sebastian Burduja, former vice president of Bancorex bank, which was looted in the 1990s after granting hundreds of preferential loans to former employees of the communist Securitate. Burduja senior later served as vice-president of Raiffeisen Bank. In 1990 he was voted mayor of Piatra Neamt and in the same year was elected as an independent MP on the FSN list, according to his own statements. Burduja sr.’s official résumé, posted on the website of a company he controls, lacks any reference to his professional activity before the fall of communism.

Marinel Burduja has held a number of senior positions in multinational corporations that came to Romania after the fall of communism, according to his official CV on the website of the consultancy company he controls:

Raiffeisen Bank Romania (2001 – 2012): First Vice-President, Deputy CEO & Head of Corporate
ABN AMRO Romania (1998 – 2001): Vice President & Head of Corporate
Creditanstalt Romania (1996 – 1998): Vice-Chairman
Christian Dior Romania (1993 – 1994): General Manager Romania

Asked by G4Media reporter where he worked before 1989, he said that „before 1990 I worked as a credit inspector at the Investment Bank, Piatra Neamț branch. When I finished my degree in International Relations (1976, according to his résumé – ed.) I was assigned as an economist at Confex, the Bucharest Clothing Industry Centre. Then I was an economist at the National Aeronautical Centre, later I transferred to Piatra Neamt.

What is ALRO Slatina. ALRO Slatina is the largest aluminium producer in Romania. It ended 2022 with a turnover of 3.55 billion lei, up 1.5% compared to 2021, and a consolidated net profit of 412.1 million lei, compared to a net profit of 26.25 million lei recorded in 2021, after benefiting from the rise in aluminium prices, according to Economedia.

ALRO SA’s main shareholders are Vimetco (54%), Pavăl Holding (the holding company of Dedeman’s founders, with 23%) and Fondul Proprietatea (10%).

Vitali Machitski has transferred his share in Vimetco to other entities as early as December 2021, according to Veridica.ro. Vitali Machitski’s son Pavel, along with two other Russian oligarchs close to the family, subsequently resigned from Alro Slatina’s board of directors in early March 2022, in order to remove any element that could link Alro Slatina to the Machitski family.

How Minister Sebastian Burduja responded to G4Media questions about the business relationship between his father and the Russian oligarch.

Sebastian Burduja (38) is Minister of Communications and President of the PNL organisation in Sector 1. Burduja has been in the public eye since 2009, when he launched an NGO dedicated to students abroad with great fanfare. Since then, Burduja has constantly gravitated around the political leaders of the day, regardless of their political colour, ran as an independent in the parliamentary elections, created a party that merged with the PNL, and thus was quickly propelled as an MP and minister.

In 2009, the launch event of the League of Romanian Students Abroad (LSRS)was attended by figures such as Dan Voiculescu, Mircea Geoană, Sebastian Ghiță, Mihai Gâdea, according to a communiqué of the LSRS at the time, which has since become unavailable on the League’s website.

As for his professional experience, Sebastian Burduja said in an interview for ViitorulRomania.ro that his father supported his studies in the US at Stanford and Harvard.

• Sebastian Burduja’s answers to G4Media questions about the relationship between his father and the family of oligarch Machitsky:

„Since 2016 you have been concerned about my father’s career, a subject regularly reheated. I continue to hope that the era of cadre files and alleged ‘unhealthy origins’ is over in Romania.

1. I know that my father was appointed to the Board of Directors of ALRO Slatina through a transparent vote at the General Meeting of Shareholders, following a contest in which he participated, to hold a position on the company’s board. The contest was transparent and my father’s candidacy independent. The vote at the shareholders’ meeting was also transparent. There is no reason to make the claim that my father was appointed by a Russian oligarch or someone associated with him. In addition, the company is listed on the stock exchange and is obliged to publish accurate, transparent and verifiable data.

2. My father was selected from among the candidates on the basis of his professional experience in the banking sector and had no direct or interlocking relations with the shareholders you claim. The shareholding structure of ALRO SA is public. There has never been any direct or other connection between my father and any Russian oligarch.

As far as my political decisions and positions are concerned, they are constantly oriented towards Europe and our North Atlantic partners. And this throughout my academic and professional career. I would remind you that one of my first measures, as Minister for Research, Innovation and Digitisation, was the ban on Russian anti-virus, known as the anti-Kaspersky law.

I am and will always be a supporter of Western values, as I was educated at home and in the United States.