Caritas money financed memorials commemorating the Romanian struggle against Hungarian rule

Caritas money financed memorials commemorating the Romanian struggle against Hungarian rule.When it collapsed, in late 1993, speculation mounted that Caritas had been a front for a massive money-laundering operation, involving drugs and gun-running. In 1993 thousands of Romanians flocked to Cluj to invest anything they could.When the going was good, it was very good Those that got in at the beginning reaped riches Cluj boomed, and property prices rocketed. the press was the force that hit Caritas like a beast.”Although sceptical about pyramid schemes, Romania’s media shared in an initial sense of wonder at the extraordinary events that followed the launch of Caritas in Cluj in June 1992.After receiving the blessing of the ultra-nationalist mayor of Cluj, Gheorghe Funar, the scheme took off. Within weeks, almost everybody in Cluj had bought a stake, lured by the promise of eight-fold returns within three months.The pyramid’s fame spread throughout the country, which was suffering three-digit inflation. If he gets it, he promises to dish it out to those owed money from the scheme. Then he hopes to start the whole cycle over again.”This system worked and should have functioned longer,” he said, shortly before his arrest “But the press brought us down … Earlier this month, the Cluj Court of Appeal cut four years off Stoica’s sentence, on the grounds that there was no proof that he intended to embezzle funds.

Mr Stoica hopes another appeal will result in him not having to serve the remaining 11 months of his sentence.When he doe get out, he plans to take on the government, pressing for the reimbursement of the millions paid in tax while money was pouring in to the Caritas coffers. In prison in the Transylvanian city of Cluj, where he has been confined for more than a year, the former bookkeeper is plotting a comeback.Things are running his way. For Stoica, who went from being the most loved to the most despised man in Romania, it ended in a six-year jail term.
Quite enough humiliation, one would have thought, to put most people off get-rich-quick schemes But not Stoica. Ion Stoica is a man who believes you can fool some of the people all of the time. Three years ago he persuaded 4 million Romanians to invest about $1bn (pounds 600m) in a pyramid scheme that at first paid out handsome dividends but then went bankrupt.

“When we found he had syphilis, we discovered he’d been raped by a man six months ago,” she said “They yearn for affection That’s all we can give them.We can’t even give them hope.”. Badly cut also on the face, she had been attacked by her partner.”These kids’ inborn image of themselves is one of slaves,” Dr Bezerra said, as a couple of dozen children clutched mugs of cocoa and buttered bread rolls. “I teach them that they came from Africa, a land where their ancestors were kings and queens When a man has no pride in his ancestors he has nothing. I tell them that they helped build this country, that they have rights.”As she read to them, she cuddled six-year-old Filipi. Others she had to fetch from alcoholic mothers who kept them padlocked in the family hut.On the nearby kerb, Ayrton, the driver, was doubling as a doctor. Sitting on the back of Dr Bezerra’s car, he poured disinfectant over the gory stumps of two of a screaming middle-aged woman’s fingers. One of the problems now is getting her and her mother to re-adapt to each other after the new life she has lived.”In the tiny hut she has turned into kitchen, school and community centre, beneath a motorway flyover at Coqueirinho, Dr Bezerra sat cross-legged to teach “her” children, mostly black, of their roots Some had come running to her.