Rise Project 
- The Georgescu family first sold a villa in Corbeanca.
- The price? €1 million.
- The buyer was a key figure in the Radu Mazăre-Nicușor Constantinescu group, the PSD tandem that ruled Constanța County at the time and is now serving long prison sentences for corruption.
- A few months later, the same businessman also bought the Titan apartment belonging to Călin Georgescu’s parents.
- Meanwhile, the Georgescu family began making real estate purchases in Austria.
The real estate from Austria
A constant critic of the West, presidential candidate Călin Georgescu has invested more money in Europe than in Romania.
At least in real estate.
The Georgescu family has spent much of the past years in Austria, where they have also invested hundreds of thousands of euros in real estate.
Together with investigative journalists from the Austrian publication Profil, we identified several properties purchased by the Georgescu couple over the past fifteen years.
The first transaction took place on June 5, 2011, when the Georgescu family signed a purchase agreement for an apartment worth €110,000 in a town near Vienna. At that time, Călin Georgescu was in his second year as a UN rapporteur.
Five months later, on November 3, 2011, the Georgescu’s bought a second property in Austria: a villa for which they paid €410,000. The property is located in Alland, a picturesque town nestled among wooded hills just 30 kilometers from Vienna.
Documents obtained by RISE and the transaction chronology suggest that some of the money came from Romania, where the Georgescu couple made their first million euros through another real estate transaction. The money came from a member of the PSD tandem Radu Mazăre – Nicușor Constantinescu, a group that has accumulated long prison sentences for corruption, many illegal land restitutions, and shady real estate deals along the coast.
On July 25, 2011, businessman Husein Ozghen, a close associate of the Constanța group, bought a property for 4.27 million RON (nearly €1 million), with the money going to Cristela Georgescu, the wife of the presidential candidate.
It was a 126 sqm villa in Corbeanca with 533 sqm of land. The property’s history shows that Andrei Deak had previously sold the property to Cristela Georgescu in 2006 for just €23,000.
When contacted by phone, Andrei Deak struggled to recall the transaction details but confirmed the sale:
“I built villas in Corbeanca and sold them. I don’t remember Mrs. Georgescu, but I definitely sold through an intermediary. (…) If the transaction states that it was €23,000, then that’s what it was.”
Andrei Deak was born in Moscow, USSR, but lives in Romania. According to CNSAS, he was recruited by the Securitate in 1979 and signed a commitment while working as a tour guide for the state-run BTT agency. He provided paid reports on foreign students in Romania and tourists, particularly those from the United States and the UK. He used the codename “Andi”.
Documents reviewed by RISE indicate that before 1989, he frequently traveled to the USSR, where his family lived. CNSAS sought to confirm his status as a Securitate collaborator, but Deak won the case in court.
*”The court finds that the plaintiff provided information regarding his own connections with foreign citizens, formed due to his professional activity or at the request of security agencies, rather than about other people’s relations with foreigners or Romanians abroad.
Since there is no evidence that the reports targeted activities or attitudes hostile to the regime, the court considers it unnecessary to analyze whether providing the information restricted fundamental human rights and freedoms, as both conditions must be met cumulatively,”* the judges’ decision states.
Update – November 30
After the article was published, Andrei Deak sent us the 2006 sales contract. It shows that the actual price of the Corbeanca property was €250,000, not €23,000, as previously stated in documents reviewed by RISE.
Four months later, on November 10, 2011, Georgescu family signed a new deal with Husein Ozghen. This time, the seller is Aneta Georgescu, Călin Georgescu’s mother, from whom Ozghen buys a three-room apartment in a communist flat building in Bucharest.
The price was 100,000 Euro. But Aneta Georgescu received the right for usufruct, after the sale, meaning that she could continue to live there. Călin Georgescu had also declared his domicile there, as shown by data from the Trade Register. Ozghen resold the apartment five years later.
We went to the site to obtain more information about the history of this apartment. We learned that in his youth, Călin Georgescu and his ex-wife lived there for a short period of time, together with his parents.
“They didn’t stay long. At the time, it was said that through his father, Scarlat Georgescu, Călin Georgescu became a protegee of Malița (Mircea Malița, former communist dignitary) and of Bleahu (former minister of the environment in the early 90s). After that, I found out that he had been transferred to a new flat in a building, where mostly securitate was accomodated and from there he went to study in Great Britain and America,” said one of the neighbors, who added that after the death of his parents, the apartment was sold “to some important people.”
“We don’t know who, but I remember that it had a Turkish name. They took everything out of the house, some pieces of furniture ended up with the neighbors, and then they sold it. And since then, I have never seen Călin Georgescu again.”
Mircea Malița was deputy minister of foreign affairs and minister of education and training during the communist period. Between 1982-1985 he was also the Ambassador of Romania to the United States of America. Marcian Bleahu was the Minister of the Environment (1991-1992) and a former senator from the Ecological Movement of Romania.
At the time of the two transactions in 2011, Cristela Georgescu was working at CitiBank Romania, and Călin Georgescu was replaced by Vasile Dănuţ Precup in a private company where he was active for some time. Precup is another close associate of Sorin Strutinsky (a businessman and a traditional member of the Mazăre group). Precup was also one of the shareholders in the residential project on the seaside, Mamaia Investments, an investment estimated at 170 million euros, which was then in the authorization phase.
The project was never finalized. The land was investigated by the Anti Corruption prosecutors, being on the list of illegal restitutions, a case that brought Radu Mazăre a sentence to 9 years in prison. Next to Precup, as shareholders in Mamaia Investments, were two Portuguese investors and two Austrian companies, now liquidated.
We contacted Husein Ozghen, the man who purchased the properties from the Georgescu family.
The businessman said it is a pure coincidence that he bought both the house in Corbeanca and the apartment in Titan from Georgescu. He claims that he did not know him and did not know that he was close to the Mazăre group. And 1 million euros does not seem like a lot to him.
“It was a good price, it was a villa in Corbeanca, I did not know Georgescu. I do not know if he knew anyone else in Constanța,” Husein Ozghen told RISE Reporters.
THE BUSINESS GROUP FROM THE SEASIDE
Husein Ozghen, 73, when he bought the properties from the Georgescu family in 2011, he was a business partner involved in the real estate business together with Mazăre – Sorin Strutinsky – Constantinescu. All three of them were sentenced, one by one, to prison for influence peddling, abuse of office or bribery.
Ozghen was a traditional business partner of Nicușor Constantinescu, the former president of the Constanța County Council, sentenced in 2019 to ten years in prison for corruption. Likewise, Ozghen was also a partner with Radu Mazăre, the former mayor of Constanța sentenced to five years in prison in the same case for bribery, but also with Sorin Strutinsky.
Dănuț Vasile Precup, 66, was also in the entourage of the seaside group. On November 24, 2009, Precup became a partner in Medisport Serv SRL, replacing Călin Georgescu. It was the period when the real estate project in Mamaia was taking shape, in which he was also a shareholder.
Separately, Precup was involved in the business entourage of Sorin Strutinsky, the traditional partner of the Mazăre-Constantinescu group.
Precup even became the administrator of a company of the Mazăre group that aspired to public money by offering radiology services. Strutinsky was also sentenced to ten years in prison for influence peddling, but fled to Italy. Where he is an employee of a company owned by a Cypriot company, involved in the big business of the Mazăre-Constantinescu group.
Precup also ran businesses together with the son of Nicolae Văcăroiu, former prime minister and former president of the Romanian Senate.
According to our information, the Mazăre group had tried, two years earlier, to propose Călin Georgescu as minister in the PDL-PSD Government.
After a few years spent on the wooded hills near Vienna, the Georgescu couple decided to move to Günselsdorf, a town also located near the Austrian capital.
In July 2017, the Georgescu couple sold the property they had bought in 2011 for double the purchase price – 950,000 euros.
Then, a few days later, the two bought a house with land and a swimming pool on the edge of a wooded neighborhood in Günselsdorf.
The purchase price – 530.000 Euro.
Not far from their new home, near a castle, Cristela Georgescu operated a wellness office. Between 2019-2021, the wife of the current presidential candidate was authorized to carry out bioresonance treatments in that facility.
Exactly four years after the purchase, in 2021 the Georgescu couple sold this property for 599.000 Euro and decided to return home to Romania.
It is just not clear what happened with the million Euro, the total budget of these real estate transactions . The statements of assets submitted to the Central Electoral Bureau this year, when entering the presidential race for Cotroceni, provides a different financial reality and a more modest financial situation.
In 2022, a year after selling the house in Austria, the Georgescu family buys another property in Viștea de Sus, a small village in Brașov county. According to the îstatement of assets, they bought a building and a plot of land of 3,900 square meters.
Călin Georgescu also declared 264,000 Euro, deposited in two accounts at OTP Bank. Additional to that Georgescu received 72,000 RON, his salary from the University of Pitești where he is active as a professor within the Sciences Faculty. Cristela Georgescu declared an income of 25,000 RON. The money was coming from a company founded this year and that provides educational services.
According to the assets statement the Georgescu family, officially, holds no other real estate, jewelry or acquisitions, no money borrowed or officially invested in any company.
According to the Cadastre registry, in 2022 the Georgescu family buys another property in Mioarele, a village in Argeș County, where Cristela Georgescu moves her residence. It is a 7,000 square meter plot of land that the couple decided to sell in February this year for 100.000 Euro. We do not know if this money is included in the 264,000 Euro recorded in the statement of assets, submitted a few months later, when he announced he will run for President.
The last real estate transaction of Georgescu is in October 2024, when the couple buys a one-story villa in Mogoșoaia, for which they pay several hundreds of thousands of Euro.
We tried to discuss these transactions with the Georgescu family. By the time we published this article, we had not received any reply or explanation.
UPDATE 9th December
THE CONNECTIONS TO CONSTANTA GROUP
The first million from real este transcations is not the only connection that Călin Georgescu has with the members of Constanta Group. The politician was also present when the influential business team started their influence and business at the sea side.
AGENDA 21. On February 22, 2005, Călin Georgescu joined a meeting at Constanța City Hall together with the city’s mayor Radu Mazăre. That day it was signed the protocol for the implementation of the Agenda 21 program. At the event was present the representative of the United Nations Development Program in Romania (UNDP), Mrs. Soknan Han Yung.
The goal of the programe was to promote and support the implementation of the concept of sustainable development in Romania. All of it was in accordance with Agenda 21, a document adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro in 1992. The project was meant to attract European funds after Romania’s accession to the EU.
Călin Georgescu was appointed project director by the National Center for Sustainable Development, under the umbrella of the UNDP. In total, forty sustainable development plans were developed throughout the country, each with its own strategy.
In Constanța, the working group also included Mayor Radu Mazăre, former deputy mayor of the city, Nicolae Nemirschi, the president of the County Council, Nicușor Constantinescu, and His Holiness Teodosie, Archbishop of Tomis.
Radu Mazăre (S), former mayor of Constanța, ÎPS Teodosie (C), archbishop of Tomis and Nicușor Constantinescu (D), former president of the Constanța County Council. Source: Mediafax Photo
According to constanța.info, Călin Georgescu worked on the strategy that allowed the development of the Mazăre group’s real estate business. For example, the strategy signed by Călin Georgescu would have proposed the creation of a multifunctional center for the community, which resulted in a Shopping Mall in the city – City Park Mall. Among the beneficiaries was listed Radu Mazăre’s cousins.
At the same time, the former head of the Environmental Agency in Constanta, Traian Petrescu, also known as Sorin Strutinsky’s houseman (convicted together with Mazăre), gave the green light to the same City Park Mall project, so that it could be built on the restitution lands of the Tăbăcărie Park. As a result of his decision, 400 trees were cut down, and 5 hectares of green space disappeared.
Precup has been a business partner, since 2008, with the former head of the Environmental Agency in Constanta. Three years after the inauguration of the Agenda 21 project, in 2009, Dănuț Vasile Precup took over a business in Bucharest from the same Călin Georgescu.
According to the publication info-sud-est.ro, Traian Petrescu also wrote the environmental reports for the urban areal plan Mamaia Beach in 2016. It was a giant residential complex through which towers of over 30 floors were to be built on the edge of the beach, in whose shareholders was another close associate of the group, Dănuț Vasile Precup.
We discovered that Precup also lives today in the villa in Corbeanca, for which Husein Ozghen, close to the Mazăre group, paid 1 million euros, in 2011, to Cristela Georgescu, the politician’s wife.
Dănuț Vasile Precup signed a free loan agreement with Ozgen in 2016 for the villa in Corbeanca. Before we obtained these documents, Ozghen had already told us that he did not know him.
Husein Ozghen had also purchased, in 2011, an apartment in a communist-era building in Titan from Călin Georgescu’s mother for 100,000 euros, with the condition that Aneta Georgescu could continue living there.
So the question remains: why did the Georgescu family receive a price four times higher than the market value from the Mazăre group for the villa in Corbeanca?
Residents in the area say the property was never worth more than 250,000 euros. The notary public’s pricing grid from 2011 set a minimum value of 100,000 euros, while a real estate agent estimated it at around 200,000 euros. The Georgescu family did not respond to our inquiries on this matter.
We also called Dănuț Vasile Precup to find out how he came to live in the Corbeanca villa and how he became a shareholder in the company founded by Călin Georgescu. At first, he said he couldn’t talk, and later, he did not respond to the written questions either.
The villa in Corbeanca was purchased in 2006 by Cristela Georgescu (then Moldoveanu) for 250,000 euros, according to the sale-purchase contract received in the meantime from Andrei Deak, the seller of the property.
Initially, we reported that the transaction amounted to 23,000 euros, based on documents reviewed by RISE.
Andrei Deak later told us that it was irrelevant to mention he was born in Moscow, as we stated in the same article, because he never lived there. He said he won a lawsuit against CNSAS—which had accused him of collaborating with the Securitate. He never met Cristela Georgescu in person, with the house being sold via a proxy.
Deak built several villas in Corbeanca on land purchased from businessman Cristian Țânțăreanu.
After completing the strategy for Constanța, Călin Georgescu’s NGO, the National Center for Sustainable Development, operating under the UNDP umbrella, received $340,000 in funding from the Ministry of Environment, plus $60,000 from the United Nations to revise the national sustainable development strategy, which needed to be adapted to the EU’s post-accession requirements. The memorandum was signed by Attila Korodi on behalf of the Ministry of Environment and Soknan Han Jung, the UNDP representative in Romania, who appeared in a photo with Georgescu in Constanța two years earlier.
A former Ministry of Environment employee from that period, who prefers to remain anonymous after receiving online threats, recalls:
“All the money went to consultancy. Georgescu’s NGO received it without any selection procedure. The public consultation, which should have been mandatory, was a sham—they didn’t consider anything we or other environmental NGOs proposed. The money was spent on other strategies that ended up being useless.”
The specialist left the ministry around that time, right after being told by a superior to follow Călin Georgescu’s instructions without question.
“It was clear he was very well connected if even the United Nations backed him. He was part of the system and spent his entire life offering consultancy without leaving anything tangible behind.”
Authors: Romana Puiuleț, Andrei Ciurcanu
Contributors: Stefan Melichair (Profile), Daniel Bojin
Fact-Checking: Roxana Jipa
Romana Puiuleț 
Andrei Ciurcanu 
