Sebastian Aurelian Ghiță (born 10 November 1978) is a Romanian businessman and politician. He is the owner of and of România TV news channel.

Early life

Ghiță was born on November 10, 1978, in

Ploiești Ploiești ( , , ), formerly spelled Ploești, is a Municipiu, city and county seat in Prahova County, Romania. Part of the historical region of Muntenia, it is located north of Bucharest. The area of Ploiești is around , and it borders the Ble ...

, and, in 1997, at 18 years of age, he founded the Asesoft Company. He graduated from the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiești in 2002.

Political activity

A close partner of

Victor Ponta Victor Viorel Ponta (; born 20 September 1972) is a Romanian politician and jurist who served as Prime Minister of Romania from 2012 to 2015. He was president of the Social Democratic Party (Romania), Social Democratic Party (PSD) from 2010 to ...

, Ghiță joined the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

(PSD) and was elected in the

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourb ...

in 2012. He left the Social Democratic Party in 2016 and founded, together with former PSD deputy , the United Romania Party (PRU). He was a candidate for PRU at the 2019 European Parliament election in Romania, but he failed to win a seat.

Controversies

In 2002, he was sued in the file "Tracia – Asesoft", being accused of complicity in cheating and false statements, in connection with several oil transactions that led to the prejudice of the state budget of 2 million lei. On March 3, 2016, the Bucharest Court of Appeal definitively found the intervention of the prescription in this case, Sebastian Ghiță escaping the accusations. He was criminally investigated in several cases being accused of money laundering, use of confidential information, ditching, bribery, buying influence, driving without a license and he was granted bail of 13 million euros. In September 2016, Ghiță self-denounced at the Prosecutor's Office: "I participated in the elaboration of the expert report on the doctoral thesis of Codruța Kovesi". Sebastian Ghiță, who is under judicial control and is banned from leaving Romania, was last seen in public on Monday evening, December 19, 2016, at a SRI balance sheet meeting with parliamentarians who were part of the Parliament's Control Commission. A week after this disappearance, at the television station owned by Sebastian Ghiță, Romania TV, a series of undated recordings began to be broadcast, recordings in which he brought serious accusations against the chief prosecutor of the DNA,

Laura Codruța Kövesi Laura Codruța Kövesi (; ; born 15 May 1973) is the first European Public Prosecutor's Office, European Chief Prosecutor and the former chief prosecutor of Romania's National Anticorruption Directorate (), a position she held from 2013 until ...

, and SRI General Florian Coldea. The latter was dismissed following the disclosures. On 14 April 2017, Serbian and Romanian authorities announced the detention of Sebastian Ghiță by the

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

police. After a month and a half he was released from pre-trial detention and kept under house arrest for a bail of 200,000

euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghiță, Sebastian 1978 births Living people People from Ploiești Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiești alumni Romanian economists Romanian mass media owners 21st-century Romanian politicians Social Democratic Party (Romania) politicians Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Romania)