Chef is declared dead – despite attending court

A CHEF has been declared dead by a judge – even though he appeared in court in person to challenge the ruling.

Having been declared deceased in an earlier court ruling for which he was absent, Constantin Reliu was told he was now too late to contest the decision .

Mr Reliu, 63, left his home country of Romania to work in Turkey in 1992. He came home to visit his wife and family in 1999, but they heard nothing from in the years after and assumed he had died.

In 2016 his wife was finally given a death certificate for him, with his official date of death listed as December 31, 2003.

But Mr Reliu was in fact alive and well. When he was deported from Turkey after his papers expired, he found he was legally dead in Romania – meaning he cannot work, marry or own property. Now a judge in Vaslui, in the east of the country, has upheld the ruling. Under Romanian law, a court can declare someone dead if two years pass without information proving they are alive. A court spokesman said the decision was final.