Dan Voiculescu

Dan Voiculescu (born September 25, 1946), also known as "Varanul" or "Felix Voiculescu", is a Romanian politician and businessman.

He is the founder and former president of the Romanian Humanist Party (PUR), later renamed the Conservative Party (PC).

Starting in 1969, he studied at the Academy of Economic Studies (ASE) in Bucharest, obtaining a B.A. in 1974, and a Ph.D. in 1977.

In 1969 he fulfilled the military service in a military unit in Focsani.

Before the 1989 revolution, he lived in a state rental house and drove a Dacia purchased in installments.

Working in the foreign trade, of his allowance of $7 per day, he was able – according to the same autobiography - to gather over 21 years, 30 thousand dollars, which he deposited to BRCE and have been the starting capital of the GRIVCO group.

In 1991, he obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the unaccredited Pacific Western University (Hawaii), in Honolulu, Hawaii, and became a professor at ASE.

According to the autobiography published on the official website, he was born in a modest family, his father being a plumber and his mother a housewife.

He grew up in the Bucharest neighborhood of Bariera Vergului, near the 23 August skating rink, where he practiced ice hockey.

In 1991, Voiculescu founded the Humanist Party of Romania, which changed its name to the Conservative Party (PC) in May 2005.

Under Voiculescu's leadership, the party also markedly changed its doctrine to embrace conservative values in line with the views of the European People's Party in the European Parliament.

The PC, however, did not join the European People's Party.

The PC, then called the PUR, supported the Social Democratic Party (PSD)-led government from 2000 to 2004, and ran in coalition with the PSD in the 2004 parliamentary and presidential elections.

He was a senator from 2004 until his resignation in 2012.

The PC was also part of the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu from December 2004 until the party withdrew in 2006.

According to Freedom House, one reason the government of Popescu-Tăriceanu included the small PC, which received support from only 2 percent of the population, was due to the strength of Voiculescu family's Antenna 1 television station.

Tom Gallagher, a Romania specialist at Bradford University, stated in January 2005, shortly after the PC entered the government, that Voiculescu "is a potentially major problem if the government decides to introduce legislation that will challenge vested interests which have profited through the questionable sale of state assets."

Although he denied it for several years, in 2006 Voiculescu admitted having been a collaborator of the Securitate, Romania's communist-era internal intelligence service, after information to this effect was released publicly by Romania's National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS).

At the time, Voiculescu was named to be a Vice Premier in the Popescu-Tăriceanu government, but was ultimately not allowed to take the position because of his involvement with the communist secret police.

CNSAS revealed that Voiculescu acted as an informer for the Securitate by the names of "Felix" and "Mircea".

He later claimed that he only collaborated "two or three times" for economic espionage., and he had cooperated with the Securitate as "all Romanians did" during the communist period.

In March, 2007, he established a special commission within the Parliament to investigate Băsescu's actions as president and sponsored the legislation in the Parliament that led to a national referendum over whether Băsescu should remain in office.

Voiculescu was also strongly opposed to former Minister of Justice Monica Macovei.

In April 2007, the Parliamentary Committee led by Senator Dan Voiculescu managed, for the first time in the post-revolutionary Romania, the suspension of an acting president.

The report drawn up by the "Voiculescu Committee" was adopted in the Romanian Parliament, with 322 votes "for" and 108 "against"; President Traian Băsescu was thus suspended from his function.

Voiculescu opposed a draft law proposed by Justice Minister Monica Macovei and supported by the European Commission to set up a special agency for checking assets declarations for MPs and other senior officials.

He subsequently supported a version characterized as "watered down" by the international media.

In September 2007, Dan Voiculescu resigned from his senator function as a form of protest against the blocking in the Romanian Parliament, of various important social laws.

They were about promoting his projects on extending the contracts of tenants in the nationalized houses, reducing VAT on food, solidarity fund for pensioners and non-taxation of reinvested profits, legislation designed to bring more money to pensioners with low incomes, to lower prices on basic food or assist companies to reinvest their profits.

According to Top 300 issued by Capital, developing televisions and launching GSP TV and Radio station ZU, as well as strengthening the print media, have been among the main directions that have marked the group's businesses in 2008.

Voiculescu was born in Bucharest, in a family of modest means, who lived in the Bariera Vergului neighborhood.

For his secondary studies, he went to the Emil Racoviţă High School.

PC ran in a coalition with PSD in the 2008 legislative elections, and Voiculescu was elected senator in a Bucharest district.

As member of the Romanian Senate, Voiculescu has been strong in his opposition to Romanian President Traian Băsescu, who he states has exceeded constitutional boundaries and abused power.

In November 2008, by occasion of the first elections held in the plurality system, Dan Voiculescu returned to the Romanian Parliament, obtaining 21,708 votes in the 8th college in Bucharest, and in December 2008 he was elected Vice-President of the Senate of Romania, with 83 votes for and 2 against.

Voiculescu initiated a bill, now named after him, that allows tenants of buildings that were nationalized during communism to stay in them, while the former owners receive only financial compensation.

Dan Voiculescu was one of the richest men in Romania, with a fortune estimated at 1.5–1.6 billion euros, according to Top 300 Richest Romanian People launched by the Capital magazine in October 2009.

The Intact Media Group, founded by Dan Voiculescu, includes several major television stations (most notably Antena 1 and Antena 3), radio stations, as well as top newspapers and magazines (most notably Jurnalul Naţional and Gazeta Sporturilor).

After a long legislative and constitutional battle, president Băsescu signed it into law in 2009, even though he and his party opposed it.

Emil Boc's government however did not apply it, and was sued by tenants' associations.