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Daniel Boldor (born Daniel Cristian Boldor) is a businessman from Baia Mare, Romania and CEO of Exiteco SRL, accused of fraud and forgery after his company sold thousands of tons of
mining sludge Mining sludge is the waste product of alluvial mining, and in particular hydraulic sluicing. It has been particularly prominent in gold fields in Australia and California in the nineteenth century. In the 1840s in California and 1850s in Australian ...
to international metal traders as "gold r copper
concentrate A concentrate is a form of Chemical substance, substance that has had the majority of its diluting agent or diluent (in the case of a liquid: the solvent) removed, such that the substance becomes the majority of the composition. Typically, this w ...
".


Background

Boldor grew up in , a village south of Baia Mare in the
Satulung Satulung ( Hungarian: ''Kővárhosszúfalu''; German: ''Langendorf'') is a commune in Maramureș County, Romania. Its name, translated in English, means "the long village". It is composed of seven villages: Arieșu de Pădure (''Erdőaranyos''), ...
commune. In 2001, at age 24, Boldor left Baia Mare and travelled to
West London West London is the western part of London, England, north of the River Thames, west of the City of London, and extending to the Greater London boundary. The term is used to differentiate the area from the other parts of London: Central London, N ...
, where he worked in the building trade. His first job was demolishing bathrooms and kitchens in the
Harrow Harrow may refer to: Places * Harrow, Victoria, Australia * Harrow, Ontario, Canada * The Harrow, County Wexford, a village in Ireland * London Borough of Harrow, England * Harrow, London, a town in London * Harrow (UK Parliament constituency) * ...
and
Notting Hill Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a wikt:cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan and multiculturalism, multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting ...
neighborhoods. By 2007, he had set up his own construction firm operating across the United Kingdom and brought his four younger brothers from Romania to manage his various building sites. His projects included refurbishing the 100-room Enterprise hotel in
Earls Court Earl's Court is a district of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London, bordering the rail tracks of the West London line and District line that separate it from the ancient borough of Fulham to the west, the ...
and renovation of the
Harrow Central Mosque Harrow Central Mosque is a Sunni mosque and Islamic community hub in Harrow, England. The current centre opened in 2011 on no. 34 Station Road, adjacent to Harrow Civic Centre and a short distance south of Wealdstone town centre. The purpose-b ...
. Boldor claims the inspiration to start his business came to him in 2011, during a conversation with a former manager of the Cuprom mines. The local, he says, described Cuprom's mining equipment under Ceaușescu to be "rudimentary", incapable of fully extracting the most fine-grained gold or copper from its ore. Since Cuprom was built on a swamp, this local said, the only way to maintain structural integrity while building out the complex over the years had been to use this under-extracted backfill to fill in the marshland. This, Boldor claims, is why the dirt around the Cuprom complex contains millions of dollars of unprocessed gold and copper. In 2012, Baia Mare's mayor declared hundreds of Roma shanties just outside the city unfit for habitation and forced the families to relocate into an abandoned block of offices in the Cuprom complex. For decades, Roma had made a living selling scrap metal from the same facilities. Boldor believed the only way to pull these Roma out of poverty was to show them what a successful Roma looked like. In 2013, he began hiring the Roma who had been forcibly relocated into the Cuprom offices to dig out, package, and sell the so-called "metal concentrate" for him.


Exitico SRL and Minero Remediation

In late 2015, 123 containers containing 2,723 tons of material sold to Chinese investors by Boldor's company arrived in
Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
. The containers were supposed to contain copper concentrate, a mining product which should have at least 30% or more of pure copper by weight, according to industry standards. However, when environmental regulators in Shanghai performed a customs check on one container, they found black rubble littered with chunks of concrete rubble and rusty bottle caps. Upon testing, the material was found to contain unsafe levels of cadmium and arsenic, a mark of possible mining waste rather than "ore concentrate". After being turned away at ports in Thailand and Malaysia, and a year of sitting in the docks in Hong Kong, authorities shipped the materials back to Romania where it sat in an industrial park in
Constanța Constanța (, , ) is a city in the Dobruja Historical regions of Romania, historical region of Romania. A port city, it is the capital of Constanța County and the country's Cities in Romania, fourth largest city and principal port on the Black ...
. An anonymous email in November 2016 alerted an official in Romania's National Environmental Guard to the incident, who forwarded it for investigation to Constanța's public prosecutor's office. By 2017, according to Boldor's records, his company had shipped 10 million tons of "mineral concentrate" out of Baia Mare to various international partners and had received more than 6 million
euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...
s in payment.


2018 prosecution

In June 2018, the
public prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the adversarial system, which is adopted in common law, or inquisitorial system, which is adopted in civil law. The prosecution is the legal party responsible ...
's office in
Constanța Constanța (, , ) is a city in the Dobruja Historical regions of Romania, historical region of Romania. A port city, it is the capital of Constanța County and the country's Cities in Romania, fourth largest city and principal port on the Black ...
filed an indictment against Boldor on charges of
money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...
, customs fraud, document forgery, improper collection and transport of hazardous waste, and tax evasion. The charges are based on a series of business deals from 2013 to 2018 in which thousands of tons of
mining sludge Mining sludge is the waste product of alluvial mining, and in particular hydraulic sluicing. It has been particularly prominent in gold fields in Australia and California in the nineteenth century. In the 1840s in California and 1850s in Australian ...
from the abandoned Cuprom mining factory near Baia Mare were shipped to international investors and corporations as " metal concentrate" (specifically gold and copper) in exchange for millions of euros. The Cuprom mine and refinery complex was originally built under the administration of former Communist general secretary
Nicolae Ceaușescu Nicolae Ceaușescu ( ; ;  – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian politician who was the second and last Communism, communist leader of Socialist Romania, Romania, serving as the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 u ...
, and had since fallen into ruin. Boldor's clients were metal traders in countries including China, Thailand, South Korea, and the United States who, after receiving the shipments, claimed the materials were worthless and accused Boldor of obtaining falsified laboratory certifications.


2021

As of 2021, Boldor's company still owned around 40% of the Cuprom facility and planned to redevelop it into an industrial park using funds from selling supposedly vast under-extracted ore deposits underneath the mining complex. A second company headed by Brașov businessman Cristian Eftinca holds the other 60% and plans to develop the lands into 25
MWh A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units, which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a commo ...
photovoltaic park, along with the remaining 351.4-meter tall Cuprom chimney into a tourist attraction as the tallest chimney in Romania and third tallest in Europe.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boldor, Daniel Living people Year of birth missing (living people) People from Maramureș County Romani-speaking people Romanian business executives Romanian mining businesspeople Romanian expatriates in England