Authorities have intensified debt enforcement action against companies and individuals in the first two months of the year and ordered a freeze on around 270,000 of bank accounts after in 2011 almost three million bank accounts were frozen over debts of 10.6 billion lei (EUR2.42 billion).
More than 90% of the cases concern companies that did not pay their taxes on time.
Several representatives of the business world have complained that fiscal checks have intensified in the past few months, as have enforcement measures.
Banks have to give a list of individuals and of companies that open or close accounts to the fiscal authorities twice a month.
The Government committed back in 2010 as part of negotiations with the IMF to provide the fiscal authorities more power to crack down on tax evasion by giving them access to bank records.
In order to bring more money to the budget, in the first two months of 2012, authorities ordered a freeze on 269,995 bank accounts for fiscal debts worth RON2.23 billion. In 2011, they froze 2,976,682 accounts, double as many as were frozen in 2010 for similar fiscal debts of around RON10 billion.
In the first two months of the year, the total value of fiscal debts for which enforcement measures were taken was RON32.1 billion, 2.3% more than in the first two months of last year.
In February, Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu asked ministers and heads of the authorities involved in combating tax evasion to come up with revenues making up at least 1.5% of the gross domestic product. (EUR1=RON 4.3712)
(English version by Daniela Stoican)