The control body of the Prime Minister will identify the real causes that led to the blocking of the Blue Air company’s accounts, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca said on Friday, according to Agerpres.

He specified that he will continue the control so that all the causes that caused this situation can be identified.

Asked if there is a suspicion that these Blue Air accounts were blocked without a legal right, the PM said: „There are such suspicions, which is why the Control Body will identify what the real causes were.”

„As I said from the beginning, on the one hand, we are making sure that the citizens must benefit from the support of the state when they are faced with such situations and, on the other hand, those who made a mistake have to pay for what they did,” the PM added.

The PM’s control body was sent to the Ministry of the Environment to check how the Environment Fund Administration blocked the Blue Air reconciliation accounts, government sources said on Thursday.

According to the same sources, the Environmental Fund Agency (AFM) should not have blocked these accounts, and the Minister of the Environment explained that the decision was taken by an official.

„The minister did not know about this decision of the AFM to block the accounts. Those from the AFM had sent a summons for payment several times, but those with Blue Air did not respond and that’s why they considered it appropriate,” said the same sources.

Blue Air Aviation announced on Tuesday, September 6, that it is suspending until Monday, September 12, all flights scheduled to depart from Romanian airports, due to the seizure of all the company’s accounts by the Ministry of the Environment, which makes it impossible for the company to pay the current costs, necessary for operating daily flights.

Although the Environment Fund Administration announced a day later, on September 7, that it had decided to suspend the seizure of Blue Air Aviation’s accounts and set a 12-month schedule for paying off the debt, the low-cost airline operator later announced that will resume flights only on October 10, stating that it did not have the necessary funds to pay for fuel and other operational expenses, necessary for the flights planned starting with September 12.

At the same time, the airline told passengers with flights scheduled until October 10, 2022 not to show up at the departure airports because these flights cannot be operated.

In this context, the Executive approved the allocation of 5 million lei from the reserve fund available to the Government to supplement the budget of the Ministry of Transport in order to bring Romanians stranded at foreign airports as a result of the cancellation of flights by the Blue Air company.

The Foreign Ministry (MAE) call center, diplomatic missions and consular offices of Romania received until September 8, 2,663 requests for help from Romanians affected by the suspension of Blue Air flights, the Government informed.

Agerpres