Radio România Internațional

Tag: abuse of office

  • February 17, 2017 UPDATE

    February 17, 2017 UPDATE

    ANTI-CORRUPTION – The Anti-Corruption Directorate ordered the criminal prosecution of the Mayor of Timisoara (in the west), Nicolae Robu, and of his predecessor, Gheorghe Ciuhandu, for abuse of office. Together with other current and former City Hall officials, the two are probed into in a case involving the illegal sale of nationalised buildings. According to prosecutors, between 1996 and 2015, the suspects breached their duties, to the effect that the buildings were not sold to the tenants who were entitled to purchase them, but rather to “influential individuals from Timisoara. Nearly 1,000 buildings have been illegally sold, with the damages incurred by the state reaching and estimated 40 million euros.




    EU TALKS – The PM of Romania, Sorin Grindeanu, had meetings in Brussels on Friday with the President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Junker, and the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. During the talks, Grindeanu said his Cabinet was determined to carry on the fight against corruption. In turn, the European officials emphasised the need to consolidate the significant progress in the countrys anti-corruption efforts and to guarantee their irreversibility. The agenda of talks also included the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, through which the European Commission monitors the judicial field in Romania, the priorities of the new Romanian Government, Romanias presidency of the EU Council in the first half of 2019, and current European topics. The Romanian Prime Ministers two-day visit also included meetings with the first vice-president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, and the vice-president of the European Commission Jirki Katainen.




    TENNIS – The Romanian Horia Tecău and the Dutch Jean-Julien Rojer will play on Saturday the doubles semi-finals of the Rotterdam tournament in the Netherlands, which has over 1.7 million euros in total prize money. They will be facing the Dutch Wesley Koolhof and Matwe Middelkoop. In the quarter-finals, Tecău and Rojer outplayed Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez of Spain, seeded 2nd in the tournament, 6-4 / 6-4. The Romanian-Dutch pair won the Rotterdam tournament in 2015.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

  • Justice in Romania under the spotlight

    Justice in Romania under the spotlight

    The EC report published on January 25 says the political factor in particular must make efforts to ensure an efficient legal system and recommends the implementation of a robust and independent system for the appointment of top-level prosecutors and clear provisions with regard to the creation of a code of ethics for parliamentarians and the mutual respect between institutions, while also noting that parliamentarians must respect the independence of the legal system.


    What would that report look like if issued now? This is an appropriate question considering that now, less than a week since the document was made public, the new Grindeanu government adopted a controversial emergency ordinance amending the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, in spite of massive street protests, attended by tens of thousands of people. The new emergency ordinance stipulates the decriminalisation of the abuse of office if the damage caused falls below 200,000 lei. It also decriminalises the offence of aiding the offender. The ordinance stipulates that the offence of aiding the offender is also decriminalised if the act is made by a family member, up to a second-degree kin. The Grindeanu government has also drafted a pardon bill, which will be sent to Parliament, in an emergency procedure, says the justice minister. Florin Iordache says the decisions have been made due to overcrowding in prisons, denounced by the European Court of Human Rights and in an effort to harmonise the legislation with some rulings issued by the Constitutional Court.



    The pardon and amnesty do not apply to rapists, to those accused of corruption and violent acts as well as to repeat offenders. In an interview on Radio Romania, the Expert Forum chair, Laura Stefan, has warned, shortly after the MCV report was published, that the measures, only circulated at that time, would become extremely dangerous if adopted. And thats exactly what happened.



    Laura Stefan: “We can see a re-evaluation of Romanias progress in the past 10 years. If you release all the offenders who have been sent to jail in the past 10 years, its only natural that the positive evaluations in this respect turn into negative ones. Besides the criticism attracted by this type of enactment, I believe the worst thing is that the European Commission has seen that Romanias old bad habits, such as the overnight adoption of extremely dangerous laws with a heavy impact on the anti-corruption policies are still a political instrument these days. Actually, the members of the European Commission have already seen this modus operandi in Romania, on what we call the Black Tuesday, or on other occasions when politicians tried to bring overnight amendments to criminal legislation. This is why the European Commission insists on taking mature political actions and we can be confident that Romania becomes a mature country, only after politicians in this country prove they can act accordingly. Unfortunately, we see this problem persists in 2017 as well.



    But how much can civil society, every Romanian citizen, contribute to the progress of the judicial system? Laura Stefan: I believe Romania will become a mature country and the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism will be eliminated only when civil society and the political class learn the ropes of how to talk to each other. Unfortunately, these days the political class does not seem to have an appetite for discussion. I believe this is a mistake and I think that if we approach such a sensitive issue as overcrowding in prisons, there is a real need for this countrys minds to work together to find a solution to the problem. This is necessary because the problem is not easy to solve, it is a multi-faceted issue that cant be solved overnight. Its not going to be solved overnight, not even through these emergency ordinances whose collateral effect is sadly undoing any progress that has been made in the fight against corruption in our country. I believe we all should address such issues more wisely.



    Opposition parties, civil society and the magistrates associations think the aforementioned amendments have been made to benefit influential people in the political class and the administration. Romanias President Klaus Iohannis has described the day the emergency ordinance was passed as a mourning day for the rule of law in Romania, deeming the situation as unacceptable.

  • November 29, 2016

    November 29, 2016

    CSAT – Romania’s Supreme Council of National Defense is today examining in Bucharest the plan of action for the Romanian armed forces to be sent on missions and other operations abroad in 2017 as well as the stage of implementation of the national defense strategy for the period 2015-2019. They are also discussing the measures Romania has adopted in order to implement the sanctions established at international level in the period October 2015 – September 2016 and the medium- and long-term strategy on Romania’s relationship with the neighboring Republic of Moldova, an ex-Soviet state with a majority Romanian-speaking population where the recent presidential election was won by a pro-Russian candidate, Igor Dodon. President Klaus Iohannis said that Bucharest wanted to support Chişinău in this new context.



    CORRUPTION – The Romanian President, Klaus Iohannis, has approved the request of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate regarding the criminal prosecution of the former ministers of communications and IT, Dan Nica and Silvia Adriana Ţicău and of the former minister of education and research, Alexandu Athanasiu. The three are suspected of abuse of office in the so-called Microsoft 2 case regarding the lease of IT licenses at excessive prices that caused a total damage estimated by prosecutors at 67 million dollars. On Monday the Chamber of Deputies postponed making a decision, due to the lack of quorum, regarding the National Anti-Corruption Directorate’s request to start the criminal prosecution of Eugen Bejinariu, a former secretary general of the Government, who was accused of recurrent abuse of office in the same case.



    SAFETY MEASURES – The Romanian Interior Ministry has announced it will mobilize more than 23,000 policemen, gendarmes, firefighters and border police officers daily, at national level, in order to ensure increased safety for the citizens in the period November 30 — December 4. They will pay special attention on December 1, Romania’s National Day, when 257 public events will be held in 204 towns and cities, in which as many as 255 thousand people are expected to participate. Declared official holiday after the 1989 anti-Communist uprising, December 1 marks the completion, at the end of WWI, in 1918, of the process of setting up the Romanian unitary nation state, when all the provinces inhabited by a Romanian-speaking majority population included in the neighboring multinational empires came under the authority of Bucharest.



    STRIKE LUFTHANSA – The Romanian Foreign Ministry warns the Romanian citizens who want to fly by Lufthansa that another 8 flights to and from Munich and Frankfurt have been cancelled today on the Henri Coanda international airport in Bucharest, as German pilots continue their strike. Germany’s Lufthansa, the biggest airline in Europe, announced the protest would continue on Wednesday. All in all, almost 1,700 flights will be cancelled and over 180,000 passengers affected. Last week, Lufthansa had to cancel almost 2,800 flights following a 4-day strike of the pilots, which affected more than 350,000 passengers. The pay dispute between the pilots and the Lufthansa management started in 2014 and more than 14 such protests have been staged ever since. Trade unionists ask for an average 3.7% pay rise but the airline leadership offers only 2.5%, which the pilots rejected, as they claim this would be a virtual freezing of salaries.



    HANDBALL – Romania’s national women’s handball team have met today in Bucharest ahead of the European Championship to be hosted by Sweden between December 4- 18. In the final, Romania will take on Norway, in Group D, on December 5, Russia on December 7 and Croatia on December 9. In the last training match the Romanian team were defeated by Hungary on Sunday, 24-29, in the central western city of Cluj Napoca, in the final of the Carpaţi Trophy. The Romanian women’s handball team is coached by the Spanish Ambros Martin who last month replaced Swedish coach Tomas Ryde who had led the team to victory at the 2015 world championship in Denmark, when they won the bronze medal. (translation by L. Simion)

  • November 21, 2016 UPDATE

    November 21, 2016 UPDATE

    INVESTIGATION Anti-corruption prosecutors in Romania have placed under criminal investigation former Education Minister Alexandru Athanasiu for abuse of office in the Microsoft 2 file on computer licenses in schools. Also on Monday in the same file, two former directors of Microsoft Romania, Silviu Hotaran and Ovidiu Artopolescu, as well as businessman Claudiu Florica were placed on conditional release for aggravated conspiracy to abuse of office. In the same file, Chief-prosecutor Kovesi has called for notifying the Chamber of Deputies for launching criminal investigation in the case of MP Eugen Bejinariu, minister for the coordination of the government’s secretariat general between 2003 — 2004 for abuse of office in aggravated form during his term in office. In the Microsoft case, in October, a former communications minister Gabriel Sandu, a former mayor of the town of Piatra Neamt, Gheorghe Stefan, and businessmen Dorin Cocoş and Dumitru Nicolae received final prison sentences. The court decided to confiscate more than 17 million euros from the 4 aforementioned persons. The total damage caused to the state budget in the contract for granting IT licenses in 2004 and 2008 rises up to roughly 67 million dollars. The Microsoft case also involves several former ministers from the Social Democratic and Liberal Democratic parties. The total damage in their case has not yet been established, says the chief prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi.



    SESSION The European Parliament’s plenary session started on Monday in Strasbourg. The relationship of the EU with Turkey, the EU common security strategy and the trade agreement with Canada are some of the issues to be analysed until November 24. The MEPs will debate and vote on a draft resolution through which they ask for the consolidation of cooperation between the national armed forces. The resolution provides for the allocation by all member states of 2% of the GDP for defence. Another important draft resolution to be voted is related to the aggressive anti-European propaganda fuelled by the Islamic State and Russia. The MEPs also want to ask for the opinion of the European Court of Justice on the trade agreement, which the EU and Canada signed in October in Brussels.



    CONDOLENCES The Romanian Foreign Ministry has conveyed sincerest condolences to the families of the victims of the tragic train crash in India also voicing compassion and solidarity with the Indian people and authorities. Over 140 people died in a rail crash on Sunday in Uttar Pradesh. In spite of its serious security flaws India’s rail network remains the main means of transportation in the country. India saw its worst train crash in 1981 when 800 people were killed when their train fell into a river.



    APPROVAL The Romanian Government will approve this week the 2nd budget adjustment in 2016. The healthcare, development and agriculture domains will receive more money for funding ongoing projects. Supplementary funds will also be allotted for policies in the education and social welfare fields that will be funded through the local public administration and also for closing down several mines included in the Hunedoara Energy Compound.

  • Anti-corruption Measures and Policies

    Anti-corruption Measures and Policies

    The activity of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA), which has investigated lawmakers, ministers, mayors, magistrates and businessmen in recent years, in a crackdown that has exposed widespread graft, has turned this institution into a landmark of the Romanian legal system. Constantly praised in the European Commissions reports, which continues to monitor Romanias progress in the judicial field, and often seen as a model of efficiency for other countries struggling with corruption, the DNA is now one of Romanias most trusted institutions. In spite of the fact that the institution has constantly initiated and solved a lot of cases, there have been repeated attempts to change legislation and restrict the prosecutors authority.



    It was the chief prosecutor herself who voiced concern, once more, at the possibility of decriminalising abuse of office. This offence is investigated in over 40% of the cases, that is 3,100 out of a total 7,200. Decriminalising the offence would also make it impossible for the government to recover 600 million euros in losses suffered last year alone. The amount should be returned to the Romanian state, but removing abuse of public office from the list of offences means that the damages will no longer be recovered. According to Kovesi, the analysis made by anti-graft prosecutors has led to the conclusion that the abuse of office is an offence that should not be decriminalised, as the legislation in the field is clear and predictable and the court rulings in the past ten years have been consistent.



    Its not a coincidence that the people who have challenged this law at the Constitutional Court are precisely people investigated for this offence. Among them is the former head of the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism, Alina Bica, and a former president of the Constanta County Council, Nicusor Constantinescu. Supporting the stand of chief prosecutor Kovesi is the Executive Secretary of the International Anti-Corruption Academy, Martin Kreutner, who said on Thursday, in Bucharest, that criminalising abuse of office is extremely important.