Daniel Dancea, Romana Puiuleț 
- The human trafficking network in Timiș, recently dismantled by anti-mafia prosecutors, reveals an underground conflict between those accused of being behind illegal businesses worth millions of Euro, as well as their connections with leaders of recruitment agencies involved in high-level lobbying to increase the number of foreign workers approved by Romania.
- We uncovered how these networks supplied migrants to major corporations in Romania, even involving a ghost company registered in the name of an unskilled worker from a village in Vaslui County. The conflict between the key figures also led us to the family of the head of the Timisoara Organized Crime Investigation Bureau (BCCO), a structure involved in investigating the criminal case.
- He is even related to a local politician, one of the individuals accused by prosecutors of human trafficking and money laundering. This same local politician started his business four years ago with an Israeli citizen who had been investigated and trialed in Portugal for human trafficking.
The two partners
One had contacts in Asian countries and obtained work permits for the migrants, while the other handled bringing them into the country and monitoring contracts with multinational companies. This was the partnership between two recruiters, accused by DIICOT of human trafficking and money laundering.
The context of their business relationship is given by the increase in the number of non-EU workers that Romania can bring in annually, which quickly created an industry worth hundreds of millions of euros.
Sorin Gabriel Tivadar (42 years old), a Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate for the Local Council of Orțișoara, Timiș County, who had the external contacts, owns the Mecler recruitment group in Arad, founded in 2020, through his mother.
The turnover of the group’s flagship company, Mecler and Mecler Logistics, grew from around 30.000 Euro in 2021 to 7.6 million Euro in 2023.
Tivadar claims that his role was just to recruit people, while his mother handled the relationship with multinational companies. The flagship company was founded together with an Israeli citizen, Rony Bargig Aharon, who the RISE reporters met in Bucharest and who primarily had contacts in Sri Lanka.
Dan Vasile, the man who supervised contracts with multinational corporations, is a former MAI officer who was dismissed from the police in 2019 for not equating his studies.
He was a police officer in the the former intelligence structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and later employed at the Criminal Investigation Bureau (BIC). His professional reconversion led him directly into the recruitment sector.
In April 2021, he took over the company Automecatron Servicii and is the operational director at Boolean Conception, a company founded in January 2021 by a 31-year-old woman, a company that Dan Vasile fully supports. Boolean’s revenue increased from 37.000 Euro in 2021 to 2 million Euro in 2023.
Vasile is also the president of an association whose goal is to assist those who become victims of human trafficking and help them integrate into Romania’s labor market.
RISE has been investigating these networks and the people behind them for several months, independently of the antimafia prosecutors’ investigation, which became public nearly three weeks ago. The documents obtained by RISE also reveal who benefited from the exploitation of vulnerable individuals who left their families in Asia in search of a better life in Europe.
“It was I who recruited his men”
“Dan Vasile and I recruited people. (…) I don’t remember who was doing the work permits—sometimes It was me, sometimes it was him. I can’t comment further because our relationship is part of the ongoing investigation,” Tivadar told us when we asked him about his partnership with the former police officer.
Dan Vasile rented people to Mecler Logistics, the Tivadar family company, which then subcontracted them to multinational companies. In this way, Boolean and Mecler did over a million euros in business in 2022 and 2023.
Then they had a falling out over money.
“They stopped paying on time. And because they didn’t submit the documents on time, we ended up with some citizens from Sri Lanka, for whom IGI issued return decisions because of them. That’s why, since 2022, we haven’t worked with them at all, but they, having access to all sorts of our information, went and submitted false requests in Hunedoara for new permits for citizens from Bangladesh. Even now, we don’t know how many people they requested in our name and how many they brought into the country,” Dan Vasile told us from house arrest.
Before he was arrested, Dan Vasile also told us that the corruption mechanism doesn’t only involve the staff of the General Inspectorate for Immigration, for which he is now being investigated, but also employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the countries of origin of the foreign workers, where the price of the visa to enter Romania would be between 1,000 and 1,500 Euro.
RISE Project reporters were unable to reconstruct the commission earned by each company involved. We only know that, at the end of the chain, migrants receive the minimum wage when they are legally employed. However, this doesn’t always happen. According to Dan Vasile, 50% of those placed in multinational companies are not legally employed.
According to our information, Mecler started providing foreign workers to major multinational companies in the western part of the country through Florentina Popescu, a former manager at Adecco, one of the largest recruitment firms in the world. In fact, Florentina Popescu, who is also under judicial control, was brought in as a shareholder starting in February 2023 in several companies related to Mecler, including the flagship company that holds contracts with multinational corporations.
In February 2024, Florentina Popescu withdrew from Mecler’s shareholder structure, and together with the former CEO of Adecco Romania (until 2023), Florin Godean, with Ramona Paula Rus, a former manager also at Adecco and now in the leadership of the Human Resource Service Providers Association, along with two other people, they formed a new recruitment company, Mecler Workforce, which has since been renamed Today Workforce.
Godean told us that he withdrew from this partnership as soon as he found out about the investigation opened against Florentina Popescu for her activities within Mecler, because he didn’t want to be associated with such accusations:
“Last week I withdrew from the partnership. From an ethical standpoint, I no longer have a reason to be involved. Once that situation arose, whatever happens, I prefer to have no connection with the company. I worked for a short period of time, I think about a month.”
RISE discovered several significant payments declared by Adecco as being made to Mecler Logistics in 2022 and 2023, totaling 300,000 Euro. “They were subcontractors, they had the workers. We had the contracts with the factories, they provided the services. Essentially, they were kind of suppliers,” commented the former head of Adecco Romania.
After leaving Adecco, Florin Godean became a consultant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Romania. He stated, in contrast to the other experts we consulted, that the industry is fairly well regulated, though some recruitment agencies are not well-intentioned.
A high-level meeting
The Minister of Foreign Affairs announces that on September 27, 2023, Ola Henrikson, the regional director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for the European Union and the European Economic Area (EEA), met in Bucharest with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luminița Odobescu. According to the official page of IOM Romania, an entity of the United Nations responsible for migration, one of the main topics discussed was “the sustainable inclusion of migrants.” During the visit to Bucharest, Ola Henrikson also had a private meeting with Florentina Popescu from Mecler and Florin Godean, who transitioned from Adecco to IOM. Godean confirms the meeting:
“I had a meeting related to the private sector. This is my role at IOM. I simply talk with various companies to see how we can help migrants integrate. What I saw on TV has nothing to do with what we are doing. In general, the discussion was about the national context and the trends in the labor market.”
We asked how did Florentina Popescu ended up at the meeting, given their partnership and the recent investigations.
“Quite a few companies come to us asking various things. Everyone is invited to discuss, to understand what they are facing, to try to help them. Now, that she happened to be there and what happened afterward, I’m sorry, but we had no way of knowing about this,” says Florin Godean.
Indicated by Godean as a participant in the meeting, Bogdan Badea, the general director of eJobs, confirmed his attendance and explained how he came to the discussions:
“I was invited by Mr. Florin Godean to a lunch along with Mircea Mocanu, Florentina Popescu (representative of Mecler), Dragoș Bunescu, and Ola Henriksen at Osho Primăverii. We discussed the issues faced by foreign workers in Romania. At eJobs, we are actually running an awareness project in collaboration with IOM. We also discussed the opportunity to increase the contingent of foreign workers, with opinions being divided on this. Personally, I am cautious about the utility of increasing it to more than 100,000, as it is currently,” Badea said.
In fact, this would have been the main focus of the meeting, according to our sources. Since 2022, Romania has “imported” 100,000 foreign workers annually to cover the labor shortage, after millions of Romanians left the country. Some recruitment agencies would like this number to be increased.
Contacted by RISE Project, Florentina Popescu requested that the questions be sent via email for consultation with her lawyers, but did not get back to us.
Mecler and Mecler Logistics stated that they received significant amounts of money from multinational companies that produce components for the automotive industry, such as Meteor Romania, Aptiv Technology Services & Solutions, Contitech Fluid Automotive Romania, Continental Automotive Romania, Contitech Romania, Coindu Romania (now Bader), or Joyson Safety Systems (Arad, Sibiu, Deta).
For example, Contitech Fluid Automotive Romania declared it paid Mecler and Mecler Logistics 2 million lei. Joyson declared purchases from Mecler and Mecler Logistics of over 1.6 million Euro in 2022 and 2023, while Aptiv declared purchases of over 800.000 Euro.
Contitech Romania declared that it transferred nearly 1.1 million Euro to Mecler in 2022 and 2023.
RISE Project asked the companies that did business with Mecler and Mecler Logistics for details about their collaboration. The only ones to respond by the time of the publication of the investigation were those from Continental Romania, which also owns the Contitech companies:
“The data requested by you, based on the questions addressed to the Continental group, is confidential. This information is considered business secrets for our legal entities within the Continental group and/or is subject to confidentiality obligations under contractual or legal requirements. Of course, we will comply with all legal obligations that apply to us, should DIICOT or any other Romanian state authority make requests for this purpose,” Continental communicated.
Georgiana Bondor, responsible for personnel recruitment at Bader Romania (formerly Coindu Romania), said she would get back to us by phone, but did not follow through. She managed to tell us that the reason why foreign workers are brought through subcontractors and not directly to the company they work for is due to the complicated recruitment process.
The bogus company and the migrants
RISE discovered that an obscure company was also used in the relationship between Dan Vasile, Tivadar, and multinational companies. Its name is Asean Global Factory, and it was established in March 2022 under the name of an unskilled worker from a village in Vaslui County, who was passing through Timișoara.
In the same year, according to the tax declaration submitted by Mecler, the company registered under his name received over 1.8 million lei (almost 400,000 euros) from “Mecler and Mecler Logistics,” while Asean did not declare these transactions.
We found Ștefan Vânturache, the legal owner, in his village in Vaslui. He claims he worked as a laborer in Timișoara for a while, and because he wanted to take out a loan, a certain “Dan” offered him the solution: to establish a company under his name.
“I wanted to get a bank loan, and they said I needed to create a company to show that I am a good payer, and I don’t know what else they were saying. I went with them and signed for this company. I don’t remember their names. They spoke and said they were the best in Timișoara, that they brought the most migrants to Timișoara. A colleague introduced me to one of them. He was a taller, slimmer man. He had a black Mercedes. Dan, and I don’t remember the rest. They collected the money, they did everything…“, Vânturache told us.
The man from Vaslui indicated the company’s office where he went to sign the documents near the Popa Șapcă underpass, where Dan Vasile works.
When contacted by RISE, Dan Vasile confirmed that Asean was created to hire foreign workers who were illegally in Romania:
“This company was directly part of their operation (referring to the people from Mecler). The people who were hired by Asean Global Factory at one point were transferred to them, to Mecler. Behind Asean was that administrator. Indeed, I was authorized for him, but Tivadar knew about this connection. The role of this company was… because there were many people who didn’t have work permits with Mecler, and Tivadar’s solution at the time was to hire them without work permits. Rather than having a black market work crime in corporations, the decision was made for this company to take the sanctions related to violating the Labor Code. It was better to have a sanction from the Labor Inspection than to have a crime related to illegal work.”
In the meantime, the ghost company used in the relationship with corporations accumulated debts to the state of over 200.000 Euro, and Vânturache is scared because of this.
“As far as I know, it was a subcontractor of Mecler Logistics. I can’t give you details about my subcontractors, who was with each associate, and so on. I’m referring to Mecler’s subcontractors,” Sorin Gabriel Tivadar answers more relaxed.
On the other hand, prosecutors from DIICOT state in the Order for initiating criminal action, which we have obtained in the meantime, that employees from the Mecler group “in collusion (complicity)” with Tivadar were directly involved in human trafficking by recruiting foreigners who entered Romania legally and illegally transporting them across the border. One example given by the prosecutors is the Pakistani Ali Shoukat, whom DIICOT claims “manages a human trafficking route between Romania and Hungary.“
As for the foreign workers, they were brought to Romania based on permits obtained by Tivadar through various companies, but they were not taken by employers and ended up leaving Romania illegally.
The investigation that sparked the conflict
Former police officer Dan Vasile claims, however, that the DIICOT investigation is lacking evidence and is aimed at clearing of all charges Tivadar, whose migrant-related businesses have allegedly always been under protection:
“We are preparing to file a report with the DNA in Bucharest. Nothing has been done except to protect Tivadar because Tivadar is the cousin of Negrilă Ștefan, the head of the BCCO Timișoara (Brigade for Combating Organized Crime). The whole case is handled by BCCO Timișoara. The real trafficker is Tivadar Sorin Gabriel, the cousin of Negrilă Ștefan. They want to pin everything on me in the end. Both Tivadar and I have been portrayed as the leaders, but I am the only one involved in this whole farce.”
He also adds: “If I had a partnership or organized group relationship with those from Caraș-Severin, should I still be facing trials? We have over 100 cases, and 60 of them have been won. (n.r. Boolean has almost 300 cases with IGI Caraș Severin, contesting the rejection of certain permits). Of all the companies in that group, we are the only ones who have taken legal action. Indeed, they were bringing people only for human trafficking, but we don’t make a living from that activity.“
According to the ordinance, Dan Vasile is accused of helping Tivadar to introduce black money, obtained from human trafficking, into the legal circuit, and of exerting influence over the decision-making level at IGI Caraș Severin to obtain residency permits more easily.
The family relationship is through alliance and is as follows: Sorin Tivadar’s grandmother was the sister of the father of the wife of the head of the BCCO, i.e., the Brigade for Combating Organized Crime from Timișoara, Ștefan Negrilă, sources close to the family confirmed for RISE Project. This relationship is also documented on social media. As early as 2015, Sorin Tivadar’s mother commented on the Facebook page of the wife of the BCCO chief, Ștefan Negrilă.
In June 2023, Tivadar transferred HR Mecler (now Elysiumm Corporate), the company through which he told us he was recruiting migrants, to the names of his wife and his 85-year-old grandmother. The grandmother, now the new owner, is the aunt of Adriana Negrilă, the wife of the head of BCCO Timișoara. This unit provides support to DIICOT in the migrant trafficking case in which Tivadar and Dan Vasile are being investigated.
HR Mecler, the transferred company, has not submitted any financial statements since its establishment until now.
This is not the first inactive company we have encountered in these businesses. The migrants recruited were brought into the country through companies with no activity or ones that would not provide them with work. Without jobs, people could not obtain their legal residency rights and remained in an illegal status.
The head of BCCO Timișoara, Ștefan Negrilă, stated that, in the DIICOT investigation, officers under his command are directly coordinated by the case prosecutor: “The role of the BCCO officers is strictly to carry out the instructions given by the prosecutor through a delegation. Otherwise, it is the prosecutor’s own investigation. He decides what happens in the case. Personally, I had no role in the case. I was not delegated in the case; I am the head of the brigade.“
Negrilă did not deny his family connection with Tivadar’s family, but he stated only that their relationship had been cold:
“I haven’t seen Tivadar in 10 years. We haven’t spoken, and I’ve only seen his mother in passing, without speaking. It wasn’t a close relationship. My wife didn’t have a close relationship with them either.” His wife, Adriana Negrilă, was employed as a counselor at the office of the former president of the Timiș County Council, Constantin Ostaficiuc. Until 2004, Adriana Negrilă was the administrator of the company Ornella, owned by Ostaficiuc’s daughter.
Ștefan Negrilă is one of the longest-serving heads of the Organized Crime Brigade in Romania. In 2016, after over 10 years at the helm of BCCO Timișoara, he took over the leadership of BCCO Cluj-Napoca. In 2022, he returned to BCCO Timișoara through a competitive exam.
Rony, a man of trust
To establish the flagship company, Mecler & Mecler Logistics in 2020, Tivadar’s mother partnered with an Indian citizen and, respectively, with the Israeli Rony Bargig Aharon.
The latter was said to have connections “abroad” – from Sri Lanka to Dubai.
“Rony was a collaborator, for a short period – he recruited a lot from Sri Lanka, on that side. (…) I didn’t know about the conviction, and when I found out, the collaboration ended instantly,” says Sorin Gabriel Tivadar.
According to Portuguese press reports, Rony Bargig Aharon was sentenced in 2018 in Portugal to ten years in prison on charges of human trafficking. His sentence was later reduced, and he was ultimately acquitted. During this time, Rony spent six months in prison and a year under house arrest. The Israeli citizen was accused, along with a Nepalese man and several Portuguese individuals, of exploiting 11 foreigners who were brought in as agricultural workers in Portugal. One of the judges who convicted Bargig highlighted the “outrageous” way the victims were treated and considered it “shameful” that such situations occurred in Portugal.
Bargig moved his businesses to Romania as early as 2019, when he founded the recruitment company Rightman in Bragadiru, Ilfov County. A year later, he would go on to establish the Mecler group in Timișoara.
We met with him in Bucharest, a few days after the arrests in Timișoara. That’s how we learned that one of the reasons he chose Romania was that it’s easier to obtain an access visa from the Romanian embassies in Asia or African countries.
“In Portugal, everything had changed. Prices were low, and I could no longer do the same thing because everything was different, so I had to think about what to do. I didn’t want to go back to Israel. A guy from Portugal, whom I know very well, called me and said that Romania is a good option: ‘They don’t need documents (N.R. migrants), they just go. There are already people from Bangladesh, and we have a lot of them’… So I came to Romania, met with my friend and partner, and realized the potential was huge. Because the visa process is very easy,” Rony Aharon Bargig told us during our discussion.
Now, Bargig has 450 employees placed everywhere, from Galați to Timișoara, Cluj, and Sibiu. He considers himself a pioneer because he was the first to test the intermediary system for contracts. Companies were hesitant to hire Asians, so he hired them himself and sublet them to companies to give them a trial.
“They come to my office. I make a document. I issue them a permit and send them to work. You test them and you pay me. That way, I move around 600-700 people in this race.“
Tivadar calls him Gabi. He would have helped him from the beginning when the man from Timișoara brought 15 workers from India for Mecler and had nowhere to place them. Mecler Construct (now Bargig Projects) took over the workers completely, so they wouldn’t have to wait another two or three months to get a new work permit.
“This has to be changed. How are you supposed to live until you get a new work permit? They all have to send money home because they borrowed. They were checked when they got the visa. Until you check them again, let them work. Don’t give them a work permit, but let them work.“
He also says that immigration authorities don’t punish the hiring company, but instead, they punish the migrants. If they are caught working illegally in those months, they are deported: “I see men in tears. And this only happens in Romania. A girl from Sri Lanka wanted to commit suicide. She took a loan from the bank and had to pay 150 euros a month. 150 euros is a huge sum in Sri Lanka.“
He knows that in the meantime, Tivadar has secured large contracts with multinational companies producing car components through the flagship company they set up together.
“He called me a week ago to go to Timișoara to talk to him. He got some big contracts, I don’t know how he managed that. It’s about 2-3 thousand people.“
Mecler and Mecler Logistics declared that they paid Rightman approximately 37 thousand euros in 2022 and 2023.
There was even a parliamentary interpellation in favor of Rony Aharon Bargig.
In 2020, Rightman Co sent a letter to the PSD deputy from Tulcea, Anișoara Radu, in which the company officials complained that they wanted to bring workers from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal to Romania for work contracts with “potential employers,” but all the legal documents submitted to the Romanian embassy in India had not been resolved.
“Our request is to help us obtain the release of the documents for the selected workers for the Rightman agency, Bucharest, Romania,” the letter sent to Deputy Radu states.
The social democratic deputy then addressed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with an inquiry, indicating that “I understand that the COVID-19 pandemic has created additional difficulties in managing requests that come to our permanent missions abroad,” but also that “there may be restrictions regarding the mobility of the workforce and additional issues that need to be resolved before the appropriate decision can be made.“
The deputy complained that “there is a risk of losing contracts, given that Romania’s labor market needs support.” Among other things, Anișoara Radu asked to be informed “how long it will take to resolve the requests of the workforce placement company.“
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that the release of documents was affected by the pandemic, but “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the Romanian Embassy in New Delhi, has not identified any clarification requests from the Rightman company or any received under the name of its representative, Mr. Bargig Aharon Rony.“
The former deputy stated that she did not know Aharon Rony Bargig and that she did not remember the interpellation made for the Rightman company: “I responded to people without looking into their background because I didn’t think too much about it. I don’t remember now what it was about. They would also contact me on Facebook, and I would reply to people on Facebook. I don’t know what it’s about. It was part of our activity to submit interpellations.”
Autori: Daniel Dancea, Romana Puiuleț
Factchecking: Roxana Jipa
Romana Puiuleț 
Rise Project 
Andrei Ciurcanu 