Now, with the investigation of the mafia general, all the ramifications of his businesses are beginning to come out. Converging sources show that Florian Coldea frequently visited the Chinese Embassy and developed improper relationships with Chinese officials. He attended embassy dinners and discreet meetings. All these activities became the subject of informative interest for some NATO partners, extremely worried about the possible counterintelligence risks that these contacts between the former operational head of SRI and Chinese officials posed. Practically, the dangerous closeness between Coldea, a SRI general who had access to many state secrets, and Chinese officials began to worry and be discovered even by secret services from other NATO member countries. The entire commercial activity of the Chinese companies was under careful observation by both European and American secret services.
How did Coldea’s „made in China” relationships start? From what we have learned, it seems that the general was the one who made the first move by contacting the Chinese citizen Wang Yan and very nonchalantly presented himself as a consultant for the company Romelectro S.A. At the first meeting with the Chinese businessman Wang, Coldea was accompanied by his „piggy bank,” Mirona Filipoiu. Coldea and Ms. Filipoiu were very interested in contacts from various Chinese companies in Romania. What apparently seemed like innocent commercial relations actually hid the beginning of Coldea’s strategic contacts with high officials of the Chinese Communist Party.
Last year, Coldea managed to bring the Chinese into his area of interest and connections through a business meeting between Romelectro, a company heavily infiltrated by the general’s people, and the Chinese company, also in the energy business, Jolywood. In a photo from the announcement of this collaboration, all the key characters can be seen: in the left corner, the Chinese Wang Yan appears, in the center Mirona Filipoiu, and to her left, Jolywood’s President and founder Lin Jianwei, whom Coldea personally „courted” and approached to bring to Romania.
There wouldn’t be much to say about the event and cooperation between Romelectro and the solar and renewable energy company Jolywood, except that it is another area where the EU and the US have been quite clear when they decreed the exclusion of Chinese companies from such strategic areas, especially in relation to state companies.
The founder of Jolywood (Taizhou) Solar Technology Co., Ltd. is, as expected, a man of the Chinese Communist Party who has been CEO or general manager in several important companies in China in various fields: transport, energy, construction.
To further prove his political connections with China, Lin is a Deputy of the 15th People’s Congress of Changshu City, President of the Taizhou Chamber of Commerce in Changshu, and a member of the 7th CPPCC of Quzhou City. The CPPCC is led by none other than the Chinese leader Xi. With such high Chinese dignitaries, Coldea had special connections. Why? For whose benefit? That remains to be discovered.
In recent years, the EU, the US, and Romanian state institutions have made efforts to block Chinese interests that could threaten national security. Among these, a special case was the company Huawei, which was excluded from any 5G auction in Europe and Romania. During all this time, Florian Coldea worked hard against Romania’s interests, supporting the Chinese company as best he could, both in the media and informationally.
Thus, through the PR company SmileMedia, within the orbit of his friend and associate Mihaela Nicola, General Coldea pushed in the Romanian online media (the most visible example being the Hotnews site) on huge budgets, the promotion of Huawei’s interests.
Below in the article, you can find some examples from the recent period; in recent years, hundreds of propaganda articles for Huawei have been published using the Hotnews platform through SmileMedia. The recipe was clear here as well. Coldea took money from Huawei and promised to facilitate their business in Romania while aggressively promoting them through events, articles, and all kinds of advertising assured by his friend Mihaela Nicola.
One of the most visible „orders” from Huawei handled by General Coldea was the article „Huawei proclaims victory against American sanctions after a year with above-expected revenues” – published in Hotnews at the end of 2023. It may seem hard to believe, but you can still access this article with this title right here.
Profitul Huawei a crescut cu 564% după ce a eclipsat Apple în China
Huawei pregătește o nouă ediție Seeds for the Future, care se va desfășura anul acesta la Roma
Huawei proclamă victoria împotriva sancțiunilor americane după un an cu venituri peste așteptări
In order to understand better the relatioship between the Hotnews and SmileMedia and Coldea’s interests, these photos of Ms. Alexandra Ciordas, Director of SmileMedia, formerly of Hotnews, who is responsible for promoting Huawei, are relevant.
In some of the photos taken at a party organized by SmileMedia for Huawei, you can see the extent of the relationships and the people involved in Coldea’s Chinese octopus. Strangely, given the involvement of SmileMedia in directly supporting Huawei in Romania, the photos feature Mihaela Nicola, a key figure in Romania’s advertising industry, Cristian Pantazi (formerly of Hotnews, now g4media.ro), Cosmin Savu, and other satellite characters used by Coldea to promote his personal interests. Unfortunately, in this case, Coldea’s personal interests actually represented China’s interests in Romania.
The company Smile Media, which operated hotnews.ro and received hundreds of thousands of euros from Huawei, was assisted for better diversification of Coldea’s „media plan” by ThinkDigital, another media company in Romania owned by Dragos Stanca, the current director of BRAT.
Through this company owned by digital influencer Dragos Stanca, more money reached SpotMedia.ro (just one example from a longer list), advertising budgets that were actually money obtained from the Coldea-Dumbrava network through various illegal „optimizations.” Significant sums of money also reached Hotnews from Think Digital, which now finances editorial teams led by Catalin Tolontan.