Revealed | Romanian crime feud behind grisly Paceville murder

A Romanian family was operating a prostitution ring across various locations in Malta, and a dispute over the shared profits led to the murder of British thug Joseff Rivas in the heart of Paceville.

The story starts on 5 December 2022, as three men meet for a hot drink at the popular Big G’s in St Julian’s. The men, all Romanian, were approached by another group of men. They shook hands, and moments later a fight broke out. Rivas was stabbed 28 times with a penknife.

The fight stemmed from a Romanian family feud on profits from a prostitution racket they were operating in Malta. The family has been linked to transnational criminal activity, from drugs to human trafficking, working effectively as an organised crime group.

A new investigation by reporters from MaltaToday, RISE Romania, OCCRP, and researchers from the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, sheds light on this Romanian crime racket and how it operated from Malta.

The prostitution ring in the heart of Paceville

The prostitution racket was being masterminded by Florian Răzvan Tănase, a 33-year-old Romanian man. Tănase was already convicted for pimping in Bucharest and served nearly two years in prison. The file on the case showed that he and a previous girlfriend told a woman that she would work in an erotic massage parlour but was instead pimped to 15 men. 

A year after serving his prison sentence, he moved to Malta. 

Florian Razvan Tanase is the mastermind behind the prostitution ring, with friends and family helping him run the racket

Tănase used the ‘lover boy’ method to lure women into coming to Malta and working as escorts, later prostitutes. Half of the women’s earnings would be taken by pimps on the ground, who then passed on half of the money to Tănase.

Several buildings around Malta were being rented and used for prostitution. The women would be moved from one place to another on a regular basis.

After Rivas's murder last December, Maltese police found a piece of paper with several mobile numbers scribbled down. Some of the numbers were labelled according to women’s features – “brunette”, “blonde”, “red head”. Reporters found that these numbers can be traced back to several escort websites that were used to operate the prostitution ring.

Tănase’s girlfriend, Andreea Elena Panait, was in charge of these mobile numbers and would manage clients and appointments for the women. Meanwhile his mother, Elena Carmen Tănase, would fly between Malta and Romania and carry cash in and out of the country.

Testifying in court last December, inspector Kurt Zahra confirmed that the clients would make bookings through family in Romania. “Among these people is Răzvan’s mum and his girlfriend Andreea. Clients would make contact with them, confirm the booking, and when the client meets the woman in Malta, they would send a WhatsApp message to confirm that the client actually showed up.”

Through this system, Tănase would keep tabs on how many clients the girls were meeting, and how much money they had to receive. People were tasked by Tănase to go to the apartment and pick up the money from the women once a week.

Maria*, a woman who worked in the prostitution racket, spoke to the journalists in this investigation and shed light on how the racket operated.

Maria boarded a plane to Malta in summer 2022 believing that she was going to work as a hostess in nightclubs. She arrived with other women who were coming to Malta with similar intentions.

However, after they were taken to a flat in San Ġwann, it quickly became apparent to them that they were going to do more than just 'escorting'.

Maria said there were around 30 mobile phones on the table, with two SIM cards in each phone. These were the phones that would be used to manage clients and schedule appointments.

She said several websites were used to promote the women and offer sexual services. Pictures of the women were posted to these websites, and each was assigned a phone number.

Maria said she and the other women were moved around a lot as neighbours would become suspicious. “We were noisy,” Maria said. “Maybe we were arguing with a customer, or perhaps we didn’t want to do what the customer wanted.”

According to Maria, the women would be put in a room and told to undress and wait for the client to come in. Clients would pay between €80 to €100 for each session, but the money wasn’t going to the women in full.

“They took money for rent, for food, for what we needed, lingerie, cleaning, anything related. By the end, we were left with 20% of all the money.”

Any women who wanted to leave the racket would be threatened by the group leader or his lackeys. They would threaten to send their nude photos to their family back home. In extreme situations, the women would be threatened with their lives.

“They were the ones speaking with the clients, and so they knew everything. They would threaten us. ‘We are going to kill you. There’s no way you’re leaving this place’,” Maria said.

A rental called Boutique Apartments is adorned with a red awning and plaque next to a busy bus stop in St Julian’s. It was also one of the rentals used briefly by the prostitution racket. (Photo: OCCRP)

139, Boutique Apartments

Oftentimes, the men made use of short-lets on accommodation websites to house the women and offer the prostitution services. MaltaToday confirmed that one of the flats that was used for these services is Boutique Apartments, a rental unit located a few metres away from Big G's.

The plaque promoting Boutique Apartments affixed next to its door on Triq San Ġorġ (Photo: OCCRP)

A company called G&R Boutique Apartments operates from these flats along Triq San Ġorġ in Paceville. This company is owned by two shareholders: an Italian national and Mayasiar Ltd.

Mayasiar was a Maltese company registered in Fgura in 2016, with a Romanian woman appointed as director and shareholder. It has since been dissolved due to inactivity. A parallel company was set up under a similiar name in Romania in 2017, owned by her Sicilian partner, Rosario Militello.

Rosario Militello’s now-deleted LinkedIn profile has him marked as the owner of Boutique Apartments in St Julian’s and Mayasiar in Romania.

A confidential Europol intelligence report obtained by reporters indicates that Militello was in communication with the criminal group led by the ‘Maksar’ brothers, Robert and Adrian Agius. Robert Agius, along with associate Jamie Vella, has been charged with supplying the bomb that killed journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, while Adrian Agius is charged with masterminding the murder of lawyer Carmel Chircop. 

Robert Agius (left) is charged with supplying the bomb that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. Adrian Agius (right) is being charged with masterminding the murder of lawyer Carmel Chircop. (Photos: MaltaToday)

It was revealed as part of the Daphne Project that Militello is connected to the Santapaola clan in Catania. In 2014 he was arrested for trafficking around 3kg of cannabis, and a year later he was arrested as part of an arms trafficking investigation in Sicily.

He was also arrested in 2015 after French and Italian police organised a controlled delivery of weapons in Malta. Militello and another Italian man appeared at the delivery address and were arrested.

However, Militello claimed to not be aware of the package’s content and was released.

The altercation started at Big Gs, where the three accused met for a hot drink. The men involved all shook hands and they quickly went to blows. (Photo: OCCRP)

The people behind the prostitution ring

Tănase had two other henchmen making sure the girls would stay in line with what was wanted of them. These were Răzvan Iliescu and Liviu Todică.

Iliescu was a loyal confidante to Tănase, according to Maria. “Iliescu said he knows [Tănase] has money hidden underground somewhere. He knows how the websites were set up, where he has the money, and where they keep their fancy cars.”

Meanwhile, Liviu Todică used to sell drugs with Iliescu in Romania. He was charged in a Romanian court in 2017 with two others for drug trafficking after trying to sell 1,001 MDMA tablets to an undercover investigator. 

Meanwhile, Tănase’s brother, Bogdan Tănase, likes to flaunt his wealth on social media and shares his high-flying lifestyle on Facebook and Tiktok.

Bogdan Tănase is no stranger to Malta. Some of his videos on Tiktok show him walking down Santa Rita steps in Paceville, driving along the Coast Road, and on a boat trip around the island shores.

Apart from his adventures in Malta, his posts show him driving around in luxury vehicles. One Tiktok video from June 2022 shows him driving in a white Lamborghini Huracan 724, worth around €200,000.

The Tănase family hails from the Ferentari district in Bucharest. This district has a notorious reputation, known for poverty, organised crime, and drug addicts.

Regardless, several members of the Tănase family own a portfolio of properties worth almost a million euro. These properties include two flats, eight houses and a land plot.

It is unclear how the family has been able to afford all these assets. After he was arrested for prostitution in 2012, Răzvan Tănase told police that he owned a car wash business and a gambling hall. "I am also a fiddler," he said.

But reporters found no evidence that Răzvan Tănase or his family had a legitimate source of income that could explain their wealth.

The scene of the crime in Paceville: The argument at Big G’s quickly escalated and the men ended up coming to blows at the roundabout (Photo: OCCRP)

An altercation at Big G's

In Malta, three Romanian men have been charged with living off the earnings of this prostitution ring. These are the same men being charged with the murder of Joseff Rivas last December.

The three men – Dan Andrei Tănase, Ilie Constantin, and Ionuț Iulian Tănase – were arrested the morning after the murder. Dan Andrei Tănase and Ionuț Iulian Tănase are brothers, and cousins to Florian Răzvan Tănase. They were the first to be arraigned in front of Magistrate Ian Farrugia. Constantin, a cousin of theirs, was arraigned a few days later after he was admitted to hospital with injuries.

Ilie Constantin (left) and Ionuț Iulian Tănase (right) are two of the three men accused of murdering Rivas and living off the earnings of prostitution (Photo: Facebook)

The accused told police that five men travelled to Malta to confront them about a disagreement on how the prostitution profits were to be split. Constantin and the Tănase brothers were receiving a 50% cut from the money made by the prostitutes. However, they had to pass on 50% of their own share to Florian Răzvan Tănase, leaving them unhappy with a 25% share.

Constantin and the Tănase brothers were convinced that the five men travelled to Malta with the intention of killing them. They said they all went to a souvenir shop and bought penknives “for self-defence”.

One of the men who allegedly approached them on that fatal December day was Victor Barbu, of Romanian nationality. Barbu has a coloured criminal past – in 2018, he was at a party in Bucharest that led to a street fight with knives and guns. He ended up slashing another man’s neck, leaving a 20cm wound. Barbu was sentenced to four years and four months in prison for attempted murder.

Previously, he had a string of convictions for robbery, firearms trafficking, and pimping.

The second man to come to Malta was Liviu Todică, one of Florian Răzvan Tănase’s aforementioned henchmen. The group of men that came to Malta in December were renting a Marsaskala short-let under his name for their stay.

Liviu Todică (left), Victor Barbu (top-right), and Antonio Boldeanu (bottom-right). (Photos: Facebook, Instagram)

The third man was Joseff Rivas, who was killed during the altercation. Rivas is a British national who had been involved in a 2002 plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham, although the charges were dropped. In 2009, he was charged with attempted murder after allegedly punching a drunk colleague during a fight at Constanta Port in Romania. The man was left with permanent disability and later died as a result of the injuries.

Joseff Rivas died after sustaining stab wounds on 5 December 2022.

In 2016 he was arrested for armed robbery in Romania and sentenced to seven years and 292 days in prison. However, his sentence was later reduced to four years and 292 days.

The other two men who came to Malta with these three were Răzvan Iliescu (also aforementioned) and Antonio Boldeanu.

After the fatal argument near Big G’s, Rivas limped his way to Mr Maxims and started bleeding to death. (Photo: OCCRP)

The case in court

The compilation of evidence against Constantin and the Tănase brothers is underway, but has been riddled with interpretation muddles and a sudden recusal of the magistrate presiding the case.

One sitting in January had to be postponed entirely as no one was available to interpret from Romanian to Maltese. The usual interpreter on the case was abroad, and while the prosecution and defence initially agreed on a replacement interpreter, the defence had its reservations and advised the interpreter not to attend the hearing, without advising the prosecution of this.

In a later case in April, none of the six interpreters contacted by police were able to attend the sitting. One interpreter, who had been assisting the defence, was appointed as a temporary measure.

In fact, Constantin was almost not arraigned back in December after the courts struggled to find an interpreter for the sitting. Police must arraign or release people within 48 hours of arrest, and the 48-hour period almost expired before his arraignment.

Last June, the magistrate who had been presiding over the hearings recused herself due to a conflict of interest with one of the defence lawyers. Now, the case has been assigned to Magistrate Astrid May Grima.

Just last week, the court rejected Dan Andrei Tănase’s bail request citing his lack of strong ties to Malta. The court was also unconvinced that Tănase would comply with his bail conditions.

10 months after their arraignment, and it is unclear when exactly the three men will stand trial.