ROME: One of Romania’s richest men, billionaire businessman Dan Petrescu, was killed with his wife, son and several others when a plane he was piloting crashed on Sunday just minutes after take-off, on the outskirts of Milan.
Petrescu, 68, was a flight enthusiast whose wealth exceeded $3 billion (about R44.6bn), Italian media reported. He had an empire of buildings, hypermarkets and shopping centres. Petrescu was en route from Milan’s Linate airport to the island of Sardinia, when his plane descended in what some witnesses described as a freefall.
Among the other seven who died, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, were Petrescu’s wife, Regina Dorotea Petrescu Balzat, 65, his son, Dan Stefan Petrescu, 30, and an Italian-French family with a baby.
A prosecutor in Milan, Tiziana Siciliano, said…