The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) has opened a criminal case for abuse of office regarding the way the Timișoara City Hall used nearly 68 million lei received from the Government to support the district heating company Colterm, during the period 2021-2022. Prosecutors suspect that the money was used for a different purpose than that provided by law, causing damage to the company. Dominic Fritz, who was leading the Timișoara City Hall at that time, denies the accusations and claims that the entire sum reached Colterm.
The investigation was revealed by journalist Dragoș Boța, who published information from a DNA Timișoara ordinance. Separately, G4Media writes, citing their own judicial sources, that prosecutors have requested information from the municipality about ten employees, including deputy mayor Ruben Lațcău.
What prosecutors suspect
According to the document cited by Dragoș Boța, DNA Timișoara took note ex officio on August 3, 2026, regarding a possible damage of 67,840,130 lei caused to the Colterm company.
Investigators suspect that individuals in leadership positions at the Timișoara City Hall used the money for a purpose other than that provided by law. According to the cited document, the operations would have harmed Colterm and financially benefited the municipality's budget.
On August 4, the prosecutor in charge ordered the initiation of criminal proceedings for abuse of office. The investigations are conducted in rem, meaning they target the actions, without this stage implying the formulation of criminal charges against a specific person.
DNA has requested documents from the Timișoara City Hall regarding the financial operations during the period 2021-2022.
Fritz: "No one has stolen any money"
Dominic Fritz reacted on Wednesday through a post on Facebook, where he claims that the case is based on a five-year-old accounting dispute.
"Now they are coming after my team. It seems that a criminal case is being worked on at DNA for several people from the Timișoara City Hall, for an accounting dispute with Colterm from 5 years ago, dressed up in the word 'misappropriation.' However, just like many fashionable political cases, no one has stolen any money," Fritz wrote.
He states that he has no role in the case and has not received any official information about the investigation.
The former mayor explains that in the winter of 2021-2022, the Government allocated funds to cities with centralized heating systems to help cover current expenses. "That's how the Timișoara City Hall received 67 million from the Government and transferred this money further to the municipal company Colterm, in accordance with the law. Penny by penny. No one took anything home," Fritz claims.
Why the dispute over the money emerged
Fritz argues that the City Hall could not transfer the money to Colterm under any conditions but had to respect the contract through which the company provided the city's heating service. According to him, the Ministry of Finance communicated in writing that the amount had to be transferred as a subsidy, based on the existing contract. However, Colterm wanted to receive the money separately, as an additional transfer, Fritz says, without explaining why.
"DNA now seems to say that we should have done it differently back then. I am firmly convinced that if we had done it differently, we would now have a criminal case for obtaining undue benefits in favor of Colterm and illegal state aid," the former mayor wrote.
Fritz also claims that other municipalities that acted in the same way did not have issues with DNA.
Lațcău: "Other cities acted the same"
The deputy mayor with mayoral duties of Timișoara, Ruben Lațcău, asserts that all 67.8 million lei received from the Government were transferred to Colterm and used to purchase the necessary gas for heating the city.
"That money went entirely to the heating company, every penny did not go to intermediary firms, did not go into private accounts," Lațcău stated, as quoted by News.ro.
He explained that the funds were allocated in the winter of 2021-2022, during an energy crisis when gas prices had risen sharply. According to the deputy mayor, from 2020 to the present, the municipality has allocated approximately 1.2 billion lei to Colterm, while the support received from the Government represented only 5% of this amount.
Lațcău claims that other cities, including Bucharest, Iași, Craiova, Arad, and Oradea, received subsidies for heating and used the same money transfer procedure. "Just as we proceeded, transferring that money to Colterm, all other cities in Romania did the same," the deputy mayor stated.
He announced that the City Hall will collaborate with the investigators and provide them with all requested documents.
Dominic Fritz lost his mandate as mayor of Timișoara at the end of September after the High Court definitively established that he was in a conflict of interest. The case concerns the signing of urban planning documents related to a project carried out by a firm of an architect who had lent him money during the electoral campaign. As of October 1, the duties of mayor were taken over by deputy mayor Ruben Lațcău.