Romania's tax authority uncovers 540 million lei in hidden wealth after checking 1,100 individuals

The scope of the controls

Between July 2025 and May 2026, the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) carried out 1,102 personal fiscal verification actions, the most extensive campaign of its kind in recent years. The investigation targeted discrepancies between the income people reported and the wealth they actually held, including cash deposits, property purchases and investments in private companies. By the time the Ministry of Finance published the consolidated results on 15 June 2026, inspectors had established additional tax claims of 540,243,299 lei and imposed precautionary measures (asset freezes) worth 123,514,438 lei.

How the wealth was hidden

The most common irregularities involved cash deposits into personal accounts or the accounts of companies in which the individuals held stakes, purchases of movable and immovable goods paid in cash, loans granted to their own firms and increases in share capital. In many cases, the cash was then converted into government bonds, equity stakes in businesses, investment fund units or luxury cars, according to tax expert Emilian Duca.

“A significant portion of the sums that cannot be justified originate from tax evasion; these are undeclared amounts that were later turned into government bonds, real estate or luxury vehicles.”

Inspectors also examined cases where taxpayers claimed to hold large amounts of cash at home or abroad, or said they had earned income overseas. Exchange of information with foreign tax authorities often failed to confirm those claims.

Excuses that failed scrutiny

Many of those investigated told ANAF that the money came from savings kept in cash, salaries earned abroad or gifts from relatives and friends. According to ANAF, these explanations could not be backed by documents proving the amounts, the date they were obtained or that the funds actually existed during the period under review. In some cases, the individuals named as the source of the money did not themselves have the financial capacity to provide such sums, and there was no paper trail.

One person bought an old medical clinic in Bucharest and invested heavily in renovating it, purchasing new equipment and bringing the facility up to modern standards, entirely with cash deposits that could not be sourced. Another acquired two unfinished apartment blocks in Bucharest, completed the construction, and was unable to explain where the investment money came from.

The largest individual cases

Three individual files each exceeded the threshold of 20 million lei in additional tax. The highest, at 23 million lei, involved a taxpayer from Prahova county. Two cases handled by the Bucharest Fiscal Verification Service followed, with reassessments of 22.5 million lei and 21.5 million lei respectively. During May 2026 alone, ANAF issued 56 tax decisions, bringing in 54.6 million lei in supplementary claims.

Prahova case23,000,000

București case 122,500,000

București case 221,500,000

Prahova case

23000000 lei

București case 1

22500000 lei

București case 2

21500000 lei

Data from the article text

The official response

Interim Finance Minister Alexandru Nazare said the results show that digital risk analysis tools are producing tangible effects and protecting budget revenue. He stressed that a modern fiscal system requires uniform enforcement and the ability to check situations where large gaps appear between declared income and actual wealth.

“These results reconfirm that risk analysis and tax verification mechanisms supported by digital tools produce concrete effects and help protect budget revenues. A modern and credible tax system requires uniformly applied rules, transparency and the state's ability to verify situations where there are significant gaps between declared income and a person's wealth or financial flows.”