Up to one-third of all cigarettes sold in Romania are smuggled into the country and sold without tax payments.

These smuggled cigarettes costs the government over one billion Euros in lost revenue.

Source:  Tevetelia Tsolova, “Cigarette tax hike backfires in Balkans,” Reuters, August 27, 2010.

According to the Sofia News Agency, Romanian girls are sold as prostitutes in Western Europe at prices between $3,000 and $6,000 (2500 Euros to 5000 Euros).

Source: “Romanians Replace Bulgarian Prostitutes in Brussels’ ‘Quartier Nord’,” Sofia News Agency, May 26, 2010.

One in eight foreign women who are working as a prostitute in Europe originated from Romania.

Source:  David Charter, “Romanian prostitutes flee to Western EU to escape tough laws,” The Times, January 23, 2010.

Up to 10 million pieces of counterfeit goods are sold each year in Romania, according to an anti-counterfeiting organization located within the country.

Source:  Razvan Amariei, “Bucharest Determined To Fight Counterfeiters,” Southeast European Times, October 28, 2004.

Price is in US Dollars and represents the typical price of Marijuana in Europe.

Click here for additional prices of marijuana.

Source:  UNODC, “World Drug Report 2009: Section 3.4 Prices, pages 215 to 234,” June 2009.

In hospitals in Romania, patients are forced to pay bribes of up to 5,000 Euros to receive a brain surgery and up to 100 Euros to get an appendix removed.

In total, the World Health Organization estimates that up to $360 Million a year is paid out in “informal payments” for medical procedures.

Source:  Dan Bilefsky, “In Romania, bribery is a health problem,” New York Times, November 3, 2009.