The Bucharest Tribunal decided on Thursday that US citizens Philip Stephenson and Colin Hart, both involved in an organized crime case related to Romania’s second biggest oil group Rompetrol, remain at large during the investigation. The court thus rejected a prosecutors’ request to arrest the two preventively as unfounded.
Prosecutors replied by announcing they would appeal against the decision.
Philip Stephenson and Richard Colin Hart, business partners of Romanian businessman Dinu Patriciu, the head of the Rompetrol group, are charged with complicity to embezzlement with grave consequences, manipulating the capital market, money laundering and criminal association.
In early April it was decided that Dinu Patriciu, also charged in the Rompetrol case, stay at large pending the investigation.
