Former Steaua boss declared innocent
Friday, December 21, 2001
Article summary
FC Steaua Bucuresti president Cornel Otelea has been cleared of charges of embezzling money from the club.
Article body
The Romanian Supreme Court has cleared former FC Steaua Bucuresti president Cornel Otelea from charges of embezzling money from the club.
Missing money
The 61-year-old Otelea was accused of "losing" €2m of the club's money during the transfer of Ilie Dumitrescu to Tottenham Hotspur FC in 1994. In 1996 the Romanian defence ministry, which then had links to Steaua, ordered an inquiry into the transfer after a discrepancy was revealed between the €4.8m transfer figure revealed in the English press and the €2.8m announced in Romania.
Major misunderstanding
However, after a four-year trial, the Supreme Court has ruled that there was no wrongdoing on Otelea’s part and that the discrepancy was merely a misunderstanding. The news will come as a relief to Otelea – one of the most famous handball players in Romania’s history – who now sits on the board of the Romanian Olympic committee.
