Romanian tax agency ANAF scores second court victory against former president Iohannis

ANAF, the Romanian agency tasked with recovering debts owed to the state, won a legal battle over the other half of the house in Sibiu for which former president Klaus Iohannis already owes compensation to the Romanian state, according to a ruling given on Tuesday, January 20.

The state went to court with the former president seeking compensation for the lack of use of the 1/2 share of a property located in the center of the municipality of Sibiu. The Sibiu Tax Authority needed this court decision in order to be able to register the house together with the other half, which had not been in Iohannis’s name.

“The action represents a continuation of the steps that ANAF has undertaken for the recognition of the state’s ownership right and the recovery of the compensation determined by the lack of use of this immovable property,” ANAF noted in a press release cited by Agerpres.

According to the cited source, given that the defendants, namely the Iohannis family, refused voluntary payment, the court was also requested to institute precautionary measures on their assets, to guarantee the recovery of the sums due to the state.

The house on Nicolae Bălcescu Street, along with another one on 35 Gheorghe Magheru Street in Sibiu, was owned by Eliseu and Maria Ghenea and was nationalized in the 1960s by the communist regime. After the revolution, a presumed heir to the former owners obtained the house and sold it to the then-school inspector Klaus Iohannis for only USD 3,200.

Former president Klaus Iohannis owned the property until 2015. ANAF forcibly executed the Sibiu house a few weeks after the former leader was notified to vacate the property and pay EUR 1 million representing rent income between 1999 and 2015. During this period, Iohannis’s house was rented to a bank.

In May 2014, the Brașov Tribunal annulled the sale-purchase contract in the case of the property in Sibiu, concluded between Baștea Rodica, as seller, and Iohannis Carmen Georgeta and Iohannis Klaus Werner, as buyers, according to the information posted on the court’s portal. In September 2024, the High Court of Cassation and Justice definitively rejected the appeal filed by Baștea concerning the ownership right over the house.

At the beginning of October 2025, ANAF announced that it had taken over half of the property in Sibiu, on Nicolae Bălcescu Street, no. 29, which had belonged to the Iohannis family, after the court nullified an inheritance act for the previous owner, Rodica Baștea.