Sebastian Aurelian Ghiță (born 10 November 1978) is a Romanian businessman and politician. He is the owner of Asesoft Group and of România TV news channel.[1]
Early life
Ghiță was born on November 10, 1978, in Ploiești, 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.[2]
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 by 20 billion old lei.[10] On March 3, 2016, the Bucharest Court of Appeal definitively found the intervention of the prescription in this case, Sebastian Ghiță escaping the accusations.[10][11][12]
He is criminally investigated in several cases being accused of money laundering, use of confidential information, ditching, bribery, buying influence, driving without a license, driving without a license, and he was granted bail of 13 million euros.[13]
In September 2016, Sebastian Ghiță self-denounced at the Prosecutor's Office: "I participated in the elaboration of the expert report on the doctoral thesis of Codruța Kovesi".[14][15]
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.[16] 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 Codruta Kovesi, 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 Ghita by the Belgrade 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 euros.[17]
