MISA has faced allegations of procuring and forced prostitution. In , the Supreme Court of Sweden agreed to grant political refugee status to Bivolaru in response to his claims of persecution by Romanian authorities.
He was acquitted of all the other charges against him e. Young female members said they were forced to work as strippers and appear in hardcore porn films. In , he was convicted in absentia for having sex with a minor. France executed a European Arrest Warrant for him in He completed high school in Bucharest , and joined a predecessor to the Bucharest Metro company as an unskilled labourer in He began practicing yoga at the age of 17, [ 10 ] and began to teach it at the age of He managed to obtain and read books by Paramahansa Yogananda , Sivananda Saraswati , and Ramakrishna , even though these were not readily available in Romania at the time.
During the communist regime Bivolaru was kept under observation by the Department of State Security , because he was practicing and teaching yoga, [ 11 ] [ 12 ] yoga being dissuaded in Romania and barred from public facilities in , in connection with the " Transcendental Meditation scandal". In two courts acknowledged that Bivolaru was sentenced and jailed for political reasons during the communist regime.
He was captured a few days afterwards, then tried on the charge of escaping from prison and sentenced to 18 months in jail. On 17 August , Bivolaru was arrested again, on the grounds that he was mentally unhinged and a menace to the general public. Prosecutors requested he be hospitalized, which was granted two days later on 19 August by the sector 1 Tribunal of Bucharest based on a report submitted by National Institute for Legal Medicine IML.
In the IML report the diagnosis was schizoid personality disorder and paranoia with obsessive-phobic elements. Debate exists about the validity of the Bivolaru's mental health diagnoses. A psychologist friend of Bivolaru, when asked by a young girl in about attending Bivolaru's courses, advised her to stay clear of him because he was a "psychopath".
