Dinu Patriciu

Dan Costache ("Dinu") Patriciu (3 August 1950 – 19 August 2014) was a Romanian billionaire businessman and politician.

At the time of his death, Patriciu was the richest man in Romania.

His wealth was based on the Rompetrol company (the second largest oil company in Romania), which he took over from the Romanian state and later sold to Kazakhstan's state-owned KazMunayGas.

Patriciu's business activity was marred by legal troubles, being charged with defrauding the state, money laundering and illegally manipulating markets, but he successfully withstood the investigations into allegedly corrupt privatization deals.

A supporter of right-libertarian politics, Patriciu was a long-time member of the National Liberal Party (PNL).

Patriciu was born in Bucharest in 1950, the son of Valeriu Patriciu, a mining engineer and chief geologist for Astra Română oil company during the interwar period.

He graduated the Bucharest Institute of Architecture in 1975 and worked as an architect.

Starting in 1978 he taught at the Institute of Architecture.

He won several architecture awards and he was involved in building projects in Romania and in the United Arab Emirates, including a palace in Abu Dhabi.

A founding member of the National Liberal Party in 1990, Patriciu was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies in the 1990 Romanian general election on the lists for the Timiș County.

In 1990, he founded the first private company in Romania, "Alpha", having architecture and constructions activities.

The following year, Patriciu's company began buying land in a northern district of Bucharest to build an apartment complex.

A couple of octogenarians initially refused to sell, before reaching an agreement.

Short time after this, the old man died and his wife disappeared, police being informed of this disappearance by a business associate of Patriciu.

Not long after, the house was demolished and the land was taken over.

Accused by the press of involvement in a murder, Patriciu denied any involvement and claimed that her death delayed the project.

In 1991, he was named the Minister for Public Works and Territorial Planning.

He was part of the Partidul Liberal '93 (PL '93) which split from PNL.

He was re-elected a member of the parliament on the list of Democratic Convention of Romania (of which PL '93 was a member) in Dâmbovița County.

Patriciu was the leader of the parliamentary group of PL '93 and Partidul Alianța Civică.

Patriciu was an unsuccessful candidate for Mayor of Bucharest in the 1996 Romanian local election.

In 1998, he bought from the Romanian government the oil company Rompetrol.

A year later, the company took over the Vega Ploiești oil refinery.

In the same year, the headquarters of the company was moved to the Netherlands.

In 2000, he was elected on the lists of PNL for the Prahova County.

In 2000, Rompetrol took over Petros, Romania's only oil well services company at the time, renaming it Rompetrol Well Services.

In 2001, Petromidia Năvodari, the largest refinery in Romania was sold to Rompetrol for $50 million.

He resigned on June 18, 2003 due to incompatibility between public office and his private business interests.

The €570 million debt of Rompetrol to the Romanian state was converted in 2003 into bonds by the Adrian Năstase Government.

Patriciu bought the Adevărul newspaper in 2006 and increased the holding's portfolio to include the Click! tabloid, the local edition of Forbes, OK! and Foreign Policy, as well as cultural magazine Dilema Veche, women's magazine Tango and science popularization magazine, Știință și Tehnică.

In 2007, he bought the Fabian Romania Property Fund, a British real estate investment fund in Romania.

Dinu Patriciu sold 75% of the shares in Rompetrol to Kazakhstan's KazMunayGas for $2.7 billion in 2007, becoming the richest Romanian.

During the 2009 Romanian presidential election, Patriciu released a video in which President Băsescu appeared to hit a boy; Traian Băsescu sued for libel and won.

He previously, in 2011, liquidated his worth €110 million portfolio of Swedish property, as well as some properties in Paris and Hague.

As of 2012, his Dinu Patriciu Global Properties company owned real estate (office and commercial buildings) worth an estimated $1 billion in Germany and Romania, as well as 25 residential projects in the United Arab Emirates.

In 2012, he sold Adevărul Holding to Cristian Burci.

Together with former Georgian prime minister Lado Gurgenidze, Patriciu bought the Liberty Bank (formerly "People's Bank").

Patriciu attempted to build a convenience store chain named mic.ro, however it quickly ended in bankruptcy, with over 45 million € debts to banks in addition to large debts to suppliers.

According to Coface Romania, the development was done using credit from suppliers and banks, with almost no funding from the investors.

In 2014, the Victor Ponta government erased the debt.