Daniel Dancea, Romana Puiuleț - Thousands of Asian citizens end up on the streets in Romania, abandoned by the recruitment companies that brought them here. Most of them decide to flee to other European countries through trafficking networks.
- This phenomenon is possible because thousands of companies with no history can obtain work permits for hundreds of migrants, without anyone checking if they actually end up working for the employers they were brought to.
- Some of them know from the start that they won’t stay in Romania. We obtained footage of trucks loaded with 50 migrants crossing the border, and often, bloody conflicts break out.
- Asian workers pay thousands of euros to come to our country and become trapped in a corrupt system, with their debts growing.
- Six individuals, including a former officer from “Doi și-un sfert,” the head of the General Inspectorate for Immigration, and a local politician, are being investigated for migrant trafficking and money laundering.
- In recent months, RISE has investigated the businesses behind the importation of labor, now under investigation by anti-mafia prosecutors.
- We thus found ourselves in a conflict between several recruitment companies that cover a large share of the market in the western part of the country and continuously supply major corporations with workers from the Asian space.
A gateway to Europe
It is April 17, 2023, and a woman from Ethiopia is caught trying to cross the border illegally in the northern part of the country. She had recently arrived in Romania on the basis of a work permit, obtained through an agency in Arad.
At the time of her capture by the border patrols, Rozina requested political asylum, saying that she had left her home country because she belongs to the “Tigray” minority, which is in conflict with forces loyal to the Ethiopian government.
Her application for refugee status was rejected, and the General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI) issued a decision to return the woman to her country of origin, stating that her intention was not to engage in employment activities at the company Mecler and Mecler Logistics but rather to transit through Romania to reach another European Union country.
The Cluj Court of Appeal upheld the decision, stating that “the main reason for leaving the country of origin was more likely economic in nature, rather than fear of persecution.“
On the same day, along with Rozina, two other employees of the same company were caught attempting to leave Romania illegally.
Ahmed came from Bangladesh to work legally in Romania in August 2021. We approached him on Facebook. He claims he was exploited by a company he joined in Timișoara, so he decided to turn to traffickers to leave the country. Ahmed is only one among many others just like him.
“In the last 6 months, they didn’t pay for meals, overtime, or even vacation. When I realized it was a scam, I decided to leave. Many people from Bangladesh are in the same situation, and there are no solutions for them,” Ahmed tells us.
While in Romania, he tried to obtain work permits for his family, for which he paid 6,000 Euro. However, he ended up losing that money.
“Now I can’t bring them,” Ahmed confessed from Italy, the country where he arrived and is currently living illegally.
A similar story is that of Abedin, who came here with several friends in search of a better life.
“Among my friends, I’m the only one left in the country; the rest left,” Abedin shared with us. He arrived in Romania in January 2023 and works for the same recruitment company that brought Rozina from Ethiopia. He was placed with a multinational company, but he is still paid by the recruitment company, as is common in many other cases. However, his monthly income is low, which is why all of his acquaintances left Romania:
“We should be paid 2,500 RON net (ed around 500 Euro), but the recruitment company only gives us 2,100 RON in hand. (…) To get here, we paid 6,000 Euro to the agency from Bangladesh; we’re all in debt.”
Rozina and Abedin have a common denominator: they were brought by the Mecler group from Arad, established at the end of 2020, controlled by the family of Sorin Gabriel Tivadar, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate for the Orțișoara Local Council (Timiș). Tivadar is now being investigated by Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) in a case involving migrant trafficking and money laundering.
Officially, the group is led by his mother, Floare Goroholinschi.
Mecler is an important supplier of Asian citizens for corporations, generating tens of millions of lei in revenue annually. In fact, the revenue of the flagship company established in 2020, Mecler and Mecler Logistics, increased from around 30.000 Euro in 2021, when it was just starting out, to an estimate of 7.6 million Euro in 2023.
“Mecler HR recruits non-EU personnel capable of covering the workforce needs of your company, especially in industries such as construction, HORECA, agriculture, and automotive,” the group claims on its website.
Along with Sorin Gabriel Tivadar, Dan Vasile, a former police officer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs secret service, is also under investigation. Vasile founded his own recruitment company in 2021 after being dismissed from the police. According to DIICOT, Dan Vasile is one of the leaders of the trafficking network. The two former business partners recently entered into a conflict over a market worth several tens of millions of Euro.
In the criminal case, prosecutors claim that a new method of migrant trafficking has been “operationalized,” which involves “bringing them into Romania with work permits, but with the real purpose of facilitating their passage to other Schengen area countries.“
According to DIICOT, which conducted 70 searches in this case and investigated acts of corruption with the help of National Anticorruption Directorate (Direcția Națională Anticorupție), the foundations of the migrant trafficking business were laid in 2022.
Investigators say that by bribing employees of IGI Caraș-Severin, the group “facilitated the stay of foreign citizens in Romania whose visas had expired and who were supposed to be returned to their country of origin.“
For a work permit, migrants paid amounts ranging from 500 to 1,000 Euro. “The shorter the period for obtaining it was (so the migrants were desperate to return to legality), the higher the price requested, reaching even 5,000–6,000 euros per person.“
That is, in addition to the work permits they obtained before the migrants arrived in the country, the recruitment companies also requested new approvals from IGI for thousands of other people who had already lost their first job and whose residence permits had expired, leaving them in an illegal situation.
“There were many cases where the companies for which these work permits were issued didn’t even know about the arrival of foreign workers, and this was possible due to clear corruption mechanisms involving IGI officials. In our case, the bribe for such situations, related to human trafficking, ranged between 100 and 350 Euro,” explained former police officer Dan Vasile in April, two months before his arrest, when he posed as a fighter against migrant traffickers.
He is now accused by prosecutors of exactly the crimes he previously described, including allegedly coordinating the activity of the former head of IGI Caraș Severin, who fraudulently issued work permits.
Starting from 2022, Romania “imports” 100,000 foreign workers annually to cover the labor force deficit, after millions of Romanians left the country to work abroad, in Western Countries.
Upon arriving in Romania, some migrants found out to their suprise that they are rejected by the companies they contracted with or offered wages below the minimum wage, amounts that don’t justify their decision to leave home.
Others are exploited by the employers they end up working for.
Often, recruitment companies have counterparts in the country of origin, where migrants are recruited and the first payments are made to obtain work permits in Romania, based on which they can then get their visa. When these amounts are unreasonably high, it signals the first signs of trafficking. There are also Facebook groups dedicated to migrants, where various companies promise to obtain these permits. This has led to the emergence of an underground, illegal, and shadowy market in which, unfortunately, young Asians are held captive.
“It’s all about legalized trafficking and has the potential to explode in Romania. These people are brought in a state of horrible vulnerability. Besides not understanding the language, they don’t understand the procedures either. They are kept in a terrible state of confusion, moved from one company to another in an endless cycle. And there is a lot of fear. They no longer trust anyone,” says a specialist in human trafficking prevention who wished to remain anonymous.
Additionally: “At the end of the month, they have more debts than their salary. Those who make deliveries, for example, have annexes to their contract that they don’t even know about because they don’t understand it. Money is deducted because they scratched the scooter or because they were late to some address.“
Migrants arrive in Romania, and with the little money they have left, they move from one city to another, meeting others like them in train stations and trains. They sleep on the streets until they end up with another recruitment company, which demands more money to obtain another work permit. And again, they borrow money for this or are smuggled out of the country in trucks. And again, they borrow money to leave.
“Recruitment companies are practically engaged in covered trafficking, using the exact same steps as traffickers. They should be banned, and these intermediaries should be prohibited, as in Italy. Migrants go through so many hands before reaching the real employer and are forced to pay so many fees that they quickly turn into slaves. They are effectively exploited and drained of energy” explained the specialist in human trafficking prevention further.
“These people from Bangladesh are useless!”
This is also the case with Rahman, for whom Dan Vasile, the former policeman arrested along with Sorin Gabriel Tivadar, obtained a new working permit.
Rahman is from Bangladesh but came to Romania from Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), where he had completed his studies. According to Rahman, the broker, to whom he paid 6,000 Euro, assured him that he would receive a salary of roughy 660 Euro per month in Romania, an amount also specified in the contract. However, both he and others were not informed of one small detail – the amount was gross, with the net salary being 420 Euro.
Furthermore, the 6,000 Euro paid in the country of origin is an excessively high amount and is not justified by the embassy fees for the visa or the cost of the flight tickets.
In March 2023, when Rahman arrived here, he, along with seven other individuals, was picked up at the airport by employees of a timber processing company in Baia Mare for which they had come.
However, when they reached their destination, the employer reportedly told them that he could only pay them around 300 Euro per month because he couldn’t afford more. He also allegedly told them briefly that the hotel stay was only for one night.
Ioan Cherebet, the administrator of the company in Baia Mare, has a different version. He says that the Asian workers didn’t want to stay once they understood what kind of work was involved and that he offered them the minimum wage.
“They came to me, it was cold at that time, they stayed for 2-3 days, and after three days, I never saw any of them again. They didn’t want to stay because the work was hard, they had to lift timber and work outside, not in the warehouse.”
The businessman claims that he incurred losses with the workers he brought in, but he didn’t return, as promised, to tell us which recruitment agency had intermediated the migrants who had arrived at his company.
“I spent a lot on them, 400 Euro each, or whatever I paid for labor. And they are not good for work. They would be good for cleaning in an apartment block, maybe… You can bring them from elsewhere, but these from Bangladesh are not good for work,” adds the businessman from Maramureș with detachment.
Rahman and his companions took the train and returned to Bucharest, in search of another job. They spent several difficult days and nights, sleeping in bus stations and train stations.
According to an IGI source, from the moment the first contract is signed, migrants have 90 days to find a new employer. Otherwise, if they are caught after those three months, they are deported.
Rahman and his group were recruited by Bogdan Iulian Poto, the owner of the company Bogdan Trading Delivery, founded in Bucharest in September 2022, but which is active in Timișoara. The Bangladeshi man further claims that Bogdan Poto promised to get them another work permit for 500 euros, and if they worked at his courier company, he would withhold 13% of their salary.
Rahman filed complaints against Bogdan Poto, but he claims the police did not react. Moreover, the businessman allegedly called the police to report where Rahman and others were, who had become illegal due to expired permits. This time, the police came with the intention of deporting them.
“You have 15 days to leave the country, that was the response. Don’t talk too much, take this paper and leave the country,” are the words Rahman recalls.
Bogdan Poto continues with his business despite having several complaints, including one on his Facebook page, where other Asian citizens complain that they paid him money but did not receive the permits promised by IGI. On another Facebook page, he boasts about obtaining work permits for Italy. We called him, but he brushed us off: “I don’t have time for these nonsense. Goodbye.“
Four of those who passed through Baia Mare ended up in the hands of Bogdan Poto, while another four illegally left Romania. The price for leaving the country starts from 3,000 Euro.
Before his arrest, former policeman Dan Vasile complained about the competition, saying that some companies offer migrants the option to route them to other European countries:
“There are plenty of adventures on the market when they work and deliver. Some come and ask: ‘Do you want to go to Italy or Germany? We can help you.’ From our monitoring in 2022 and early 2023, we have around 20,000 people who, according to the information we have, are already in the European space.”
Those who are not approached directly by traffickers on the street while going to work are lured in various Facebook groups, where those who have left later block their profiles. Most often, migrants cross the border through Serbia or Hungary, hidden in a truck’s trailer. One of the migrants who crossed the border this way filmed his journey, and in the background, he can be heard saying: “There are a lot of people, both above and below. In the upper part, there are at least 50 people.”
“I made this compromise.”
At Adrian Nicolae Castaian’s farm in Timiș, 38 Nepali workers were supposed to arrive, for whom Mecler obtained work permits, and who, shortly after, disappeared.
“Romania is just a transit country for them. They don’t want to stay here. They want the West,” Castaian told us on the first call, when we were not yet familiar with the story.
The businessman claims that he intended to develop a blueberry farm and turned to an agency specializing in importing labor.
He only had to specify the field in which workers were needed, and Mecler promised to bring them for free.
However, according to him, because the workers didn’t arrive on time, the project was abandoned. But because the work permits had been issued under his company’s name, they were still brought to Romania:
“I received a notification: ‘Hey, people are coming on this date.’ ‘They can come, but my project failed.’ The company that brought them to me (Mecler) said that they would take care of finding something for them to do because the people were already prepared to come. The companies that bring them, I understand, have some credibility over there, and to avoid losing their reputation as recruitment companies in that country, I made this compromise that I didn’t want to make. My field of activity is agriculture. Whoever does this (labor import) must have nerves, a strong stomach, and a willingness to deal with it.“
The Nepali workers, sent to factories through Mecler
Castaian also claims that the people were redirected to factories after he could no longer support the agricultural project and that Mecler took care of the intermediary process:
“I had to retrain them, take them off agriculture, and hire them as factory workers to give them something to do, because I couldn’t keep them on my own money, with my own accommodation, my own food. I sent them to different multinational companies. I didn’t hire anyone. I worked in parallel with the contracts. There was no leasing of people.“
The people came to the country through Mecler and were sub-leased to multinational companies through them. According to the information obtained, the farmer received 720,000 lei (approximately 140,000 euros) from Mecler in 2022 through his company, Nicar Business.
“Mecler Logistic took the work in the factory. He (Sorin Gabriel Tivadar) knew where the people needed to go, he knew the job placements. For example, he would go to Continental Timisoara and say, ‘Okay, you need workers to pack this box in this package.’ Yes, okay, I’ll bring them. He made the contract. And I, based on his contract, invoiced. He invoiced further to the companies, I invoiced him,” Castaian responded when we asked about the money.
And then the people disappeared.
“Believe me, I don’t know (where and how they disappeared). For every 10 people, there was one who was more astute among them and kept track of who went to work. He would send me in the morning: ‘X-ulescu is no longer to be found.’ The accommodation conditions were better than they could have imagined. They were housed in hotels, the food was good. They don’t want to stay here. Very few want to stay,” said the businessman, who considers himself just a bystander in this story.
In fact, the farmer is not entirely unfamiliar with this world. Castaian has been a partner with Sorin Gabriel Tivadar since the end of 2021 in another company, which does not appear to have had visible activity but indicates that the two have a more established relationship. We tell him that in some cases, recruitment firms obtain more work permits than they tell their partners, and those who get extra permits directly transit our country.
“38 were brought through Nicar. They probably asked for more, and 38 came, I don’t contest that. On their documentation, ask them (Mecler). They probably asked for 100 people and actually brought 38. I don’t know what they were doing. I don’t know what their approach was to bring them. They know that.“
Also, in December 2021, the company Nicar Business, which had an agricultural profile, added two new activities: “other postal and courier services and services for supplying and managing the workforce.“
The same story, another case
The Softor company also brought migrants to Romania through Mecler.
Our sources told us that over 30 work permits were issued for Softor, but the company’s administrator, Alina Elena Wartbichler, claims that 20-22 people actually arrived in the country.
Wartbichler stated that she wanted to bring them for her construction company, but “they are not trained for construction,” and after the pandemic “the contracts weakened“.
He also confirms that the workers brought to work in construction ended up in factories through Mecler as well:
“They were employed by me, but they worked in factories. They stayed for a month, a month and a bit, and then they left. I don’t know where to tell you they are. They leave, they run away, they don’t stay. From what I understand, they want to get to countries like Germany. I don’t know where they want to go.“
The entrepreneur heard about the investigation targeting Tivadar, but has only good words to say about Mecler: “We had a good collaboration. I’ve heard there are some situations with former collaborators. We haven’t had any unpleasant situations. I’ll be honest, they are people who worked hard. It’s a huge headache. Anyone who can handle and keep track of so many people is fantastic.“
According to our information, in 2022 and 2023, Wartbichler received approximately 200,000 lei from Mecler Logistics.
Her husband, Ovidiu Wartbichler, is a partner with Castaian and Tivadar in the company founded in 2021. “That company didn’t have any activity. I understand they wanted to provide services in agriculture, but it’s a zero. It didn’t have activity,” explains Alina Elena Wartbichler.
We also asked Sorin Gabriel Tivadar if he knows where all these migrants went, where the commissions are collected, who collects them, or what his role is in the prosecutors’ investigation. Initially, he distanced himself from the Mecler Logistic company, owned by his mother, saying that he recruited through another company in the group, HR Mecler, which does not have any filings with the tax authorities. Little by little, the truth began to come out in his statements. When contacted his first reaction was to laugh.
“Hahaha, this is a national issue about people leaving. The people didn’t leave from Mecler, from Softor, etc. It’s a national problem, it’s not specific, that’s how they leave. You can’t know what’s in their heads when you bring them. You can’t even tie them to the radiator so they don’t leave. I’ve recruited for a lot of employers in this country, not just for Mecler Logistics, but also for 50 other companies in this country. I recruited the people they needed, and that’s it. The recruitment agency has no responsibility for their leaving, just like the employer doesn’t have any responsibility (..),” Sorin Gabriel Tivadar, who is under house arrest, told us.
The key role of recruitment agencies
The mechanism through which recruitment agencies fuel networks that “supply” Europe with migrants is confirmed by Corina Constantin, Vice President of the Employers’ Federation of Labor Force Importers (PIFM).
“With the increase of this phenomenon, opportunists also emerged—newly established companies that took advantage of the fact that the Romanian state did not regulate the import of labor. Any newly established company could access hundreds of people for whom they obtained work permits and later brought them to Romania, which complicated the entire process of labor force importation for legitimate employers who had already created departments to integrate them into their organizational culture. The process was prolonged significantly due to these newly established companies that obtained work permits and visas on a conveyor belt without having actual jobs for the workers in Romania,” says Corina Constantin.
Constantin further claims that there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of companies, that have obtained work permits for non-European workers, and “there is no statistic regarding which companies were legitimate and which were not.“
In her opinion, everything starts in the country of origin:
“We have been working with the same partners since 2007, agencies we have tested and seen that they conduct proper recruitment, presenting the person exactly what will happen in Romania and taking responsibility for the people they recruit and send to Romania.“
In the case of dishonest companies, Corina Constantin says that they promise only a visa for Romania: “You will arrive in Romania, after which you can do whatever you want, you can travel around Europe,’ and they charge a very high fee. What we know is that people from Bangladesh and Pakistan paid the highest amounts of money to come to Romania—around 7,000-8,000 Euro“
An indication that a recruitment company brings foreign workers solely to collect commissions from agencies in the country of origin is the offering of foreign labor for free, signals the Vice President of PIFM.
“If you look at the offers from these companies that bring them here only to collect a commission from the agency there, you will see that in their contracts there is a zero tariff for the company in Romania,” added Corina Constantin.
What do the official numbers tell? The explosion of migrant trafficking, following the increase in the foreign labor quota, is also reflected in the activity reports of the General Prosecutor’s Office. According to the Public Ministry’s report, the number of people prosecuted for human trafficking has risen from under 200 individuals in 2021 to nearly 470 in 2023, following the increase in the foreign labor quota.
Some cases have resulted in extreme violence.
On May 1, 2024, two border police officers from Timiș were stabbed while conducting a sting operation in a migrant trafficking case. Those attempting to illegally exit Romania to reach the Schengen area had entered the country legally, with work visas, from Nepal, Syria, Congo, and Afghanistan.
An official contradiction
In an attempt to determine the scale of migrant trafficking involving foreigners who enter Romania legally with a work permit, we requested data from the General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI).
According to the IGI’s response, in 2021, 227 foreigners who entered Romania legally were caught trying to escape the country. In 2022, 785 foreigners were caught attempting to cross the border illegally, and in 2023, the number nearly tripled, reaching 2,027.
In total, IGI claims that between January 2021 and December 2023, 3,039 foreign citizens who entered Romania legally with a work visa attempted to leave the country illegally.
The IGI’s figures are flagrantly contradicted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MAI) in a response to an Parliamentary inquiry from Boris Volosatîi, a member of AUR. Citing the Border Police, the Ministry fo Internal Affairs states in the document that between January 1, 2023, and September 30, 2023, 8,180 “third-country nationals holding long-term work visas” were caught trying to cross the border illegally. Most of them were from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
The official IGI data is also contradicted by the Border Police of Oradea in its 2023 activity report. The Territorial Inspectorate of the Oradea Border Police, which oversees the Nădlac II Customs (the border crossing point on the highway), shows that only in 2023, and only at the points managed by the Oradea Border Police, over 7,535 people were caught attempting to leave the country, of which 6,018 had entered Romania legally (5,615 based on work visas).
In other words, in this particular case, the numbers are almost three times higher than the IGI reports for the entire country.
The Oradea Border Police also mentions in its report that one of the ways migrant trafficking networks operate is precisely this: “the legal entry of migrants into Romania, generally through Henri Coandă International Airport, based on type D work visas (…) Shortly after entering Romania, they are detected as part of prevention activities in the border area or attempting to cross the Romanian-Hungarian border illegally,” the report further states.
Questions with no answer
As the labor force deficit in Romania grew, several Romanian parliamentarians expressed interest in the issue of labor importation, requesting clarifications from the responsible ministries. Most of the inquiries focused on simplifying or accelerating the procedures so that Romanian employers could quickly benefit from cheap labor from Asia.
A dimension of labor importation can be inferred from a document issued by the Labor Inspectorate at the request of a parliamentarian. In an inquiry addressed to the Ministry of Labor in September 2023, Deputy Silviu Titus Păunescu asked for clarifications regarding the situation of foreign workers who arrived in Romania and terminated their contracts prematurely.
The official reply from the Labor Inspectorate shows that, between October 1, 2021, and October 1, 2023, 189,439 labor contracts were signed, covering 161,259 people. The difference, according to sources in the field, is that one person may have both a full-time contract and a part-time contract, or a person may terminate one contract and sign a new one.
However, the same document from the Labor Inspectorate also shows that 31,024 contracts, covering 27,951 people, were terminated prematurely. This means that in two years, almost 28,000 foreign workers who came to Romania either switched companies or simply had their contracts terminated because the worker fled the country.
What did the Government change
In March 2024, the government tightened the conditions for bringing in workers from outside the European Union to Romania. In the explanatory note, the government stated that there is a need to “filter employers who request work permits, discouraging those who establish companies with the purpose of using them in the legal migration process, but with the real intention of facilitating illegal migration.” Now, companies must provide proof that they have been operating for at least one year in the activity for which they are requesting work permits.
With Romania’s entry into the Schengen maritime and air space, travel conditions within the EU for foreign workers have become simpler. Practically, foreign workers legally entering Romania can travel within the Schengen area as tourists without restrictions, provided they return to Romania within 90 days. If they do not, they lose their right to stay in Romania.
RISE will reveal, in a new episode, who are the beneficiaries of these migrant trafficking networks and where the conflict between recruitment firms in the western part of the country, now under investigation by prosecutors, started.
Autori: Daniel Dancea, Romana Puiuleț
Factchecking: Roxana Jipa
Romana Puiuleț 
Rise Project 
Andrei Ciurcanu 