Radio România Internațional

Tag: First Deputy Director Florian Coldea

  • January 17, 2017

    January 17, 2017

    ROMANIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE A special commission of the Romanian Intelligence Service has today announced that the analysis of the activity carried out by the first deputy-director Florian Coldea has revealed no elements that would constitute violations of laws or regulations in force. Florin Coldea was suspended last week, and his responsibilities were taken over by the director of the institution Eduard Hellvig, following accusations made by the former deputy Sebastian Ghita, who had accused Coldea of illegal activities. The executive board of the Romanian Intelligence Service has decided to put the first deputy director back in office. However, Coldea has asked to be released from office and placed at the disposal of the institution, invoking reasons that have to do with military dignity and honour. The Director of the Romanian Intelligence Service has asked Romanias President Klaus Iohannis to grant Coldea the reservist status.



    EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT The 751 Members of the European Parliament are electing in Strasbourg today their new president, who will replace the German Social-Democrat Martin Schulz. The election is going to be tight, given that the pro-European parties have not managed to find an agreement on a single candidate to represent them. Therefore, there are six politicians now running for the seat of president: three Italian, one Belgian, one British and one Romanian from the Eurosceptics group. The Romanian candidate is Laurentiu Rebega, vice-president of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group, co-presided by the French nationalist Marine Le Pen. The new president of the European Parliament will start working right after the validation of the voting. The 14 Vice-Presidents and 5 Quaestors will be elected tomorrow.



    BREXIT The British Prime-Minister Theresa May is to present in London today the list of Brexit priorities. Downing Street sources say that Mrs. May prefers a full divorce, rather than an agreement under which Great Britain would be half in half out of the EU. The British PM is thus very likely to announce that Great Britain will leave the single market, the European Customs Union and the European Court of Justice. She will also insist on the need for her country to sign its own trade agreements with the Commonwealth countries, the Asian giants and the US. Seven months after Britains historic vote in favour of the Brexit, Theresa May promises to start the exit procedure by the end of March. Negotiations with Brussels will last two years.



    MOLDOVA The new president of the Republic of Moldova, the pro-Russia socialist Igor Dodon, is today holding talks in Moscow with the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Moldovan president wants to obtain the lifting of restrictions on the import of Moldovan agricultural products. Restrictions were imposed by Moscow in the aftermath of Moldovas signing an association agreement with the EU. The president also hopes that the status of the 500,000 Moldovan citizens working in Russia will be regulated. Another issue is that of Transdniestrs debt to Gazprom, standing at 4 billion dollars. The Transdniestr issue will be approached also against the background of the recent meeting between the president of Moldova and the new leader in Tiraspol Vadim Krasnoselski. Transdiestr came out of Chisinaus control in 1992, after an armed conflict that claimed hundreds of lives, settled by the intervention of the Russian troops on the separatists side.



    ATTACK The man who shot and killed 39 people on New Years in a club in Istanbul has been arrested in a neighborhood of the European part of the city. According to authorities, the perpetrator, an Uzbek aged 34, member of a terrorist cell in Central Asia, has admitted his guilt. Another four people have been detained in this case, a Kirghiz, the owner of the apartment he was caught in, and three women. More than half of the victims of the attack were foreign citizens, from Israel, India, Lebanon, France, Tunisia, Belgium, Kuwait and Canada. The attack has been claimed by the Islamic State organization, as an act of retaliation against Turkeys involvement in Syria.



    NATO The Romanian Army Chief of Staff Nicolae Ciuca is attending the proceedings of the 176th NATO Military Committee in Brussels. According to the Romanian Defense Ministry, the agenda of the meeting includes topics such as the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan and the recent threats against NATO. Also, sessions will be held devoted to NATOs partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia.



    AUSTRALIAN OPEN Two Romanian tennis players Monica Niculescu and Ana Bogdan have today lost matches in the first round of the Australian Opens singles. Niculescu was defeated 2-1 by the Russian Ana Blinkova and Bogdan lost 2-0 to Elena Vesnina, also from Russia. On Monday, in the inaugural round, Sorana Carstea beat 2-nil the Russian Irina Hromaceva, and Irina Begu defeated in three sets Iaroslava Svedova of Kazakhstan. Another two Romanian players have been eliminated. Simona Halep, number 4 in the WTA rankings, was surprisingly defeated by the American Shelby Rogers, ranked 57th in the same classification. Patricia Tig was eliminated by the Puerto Rican Monica Puig, in two sets.



  • Top-level Suspension in the Romanian Intelligence Service

    Top-level Suspension in the Romanian Intelligence Service

    The first deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service, lieutenant general Florian Coldea, has practically been suspended from office and is subject to an internal investigation. The communiqué issued by the Romanian Intelligence Service, which has been given extensive coverage by the entire media, reads that following information circulated in the public space on lieutenant general Florian Coldea, and which make the object of a preliminary investigation, the director of the Romanian Intelligence Service ordered, in keeping with the current procedures, the setting up of a special commission to investigate possible law infringement and violations of deontological rules. To that aim, until the completion of the investigation, general Florian Coldea is suspended from office, and his prerogatives as first deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service will be taken over by the director of the Service, Eduard Hellvig.



    Pundits say the information circulated in the public space refers mainly to a series of accusations launched by the former MP Sebastian Ghiţă. In a video recording, broadcast by the TV channel he runs, Ghiţă claims to have spent his vacation together with the deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service and his wife, in the Seychelles. A controversial character, the former Social Democrat MP who later joined the ranks of a marginal, Euro-sceptical party, which failed to reach the necessary threshold to be represented in Parliament, Ghiţă is reported missing since the end of 2016. An arrest warrant has been issued on his name for corruption. Enjoying little credibility, Ghiţă is however trying to leave the impression of a vigilante. He says he will disclose information on people in the top management of the Romanian Intelligence Service and the National Anticorruption Directorate because, in his opinion, things are advancing in Romania at an increasingly fast pace towards a sort of terror that no one will be able to resist.



    Terror, dictatorship, police state, prosecutors’ republic; these are the favourite words used by the politicians who are suspected, investigated or accused of corruption, to whom Coldea and the head of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, Laura Codruţa Kovesi, are the most detested and detestable public figures. Seemingly intangible for a long period of time, Coldea seems to be extremely vulnerable nowadays, and there are voices saying that he runs the risk of seeing his successful and bright career as an intelligence officer coming to an end, at the age of only 45. He became famous in 2005, when he coordinated the release of three Romanian journalists kidnapped in Iraq. The then president Traian Băsescu appointed him first deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service. This means that he has actually served as number one at operative level.



    Coldea has maintained his position for more than a decade, under the helm of three civil directors – Radu Timofte, George Maior and Eduard Hellvig – and remained the strongman of the Service, even after Basescu completed his term in office, being succeeded by Klaus Iohannis. Now, according to the pundits’ speculations, Coldea has become the victim of his own creation, because, they say, he was the one who invented Ghita, who allegedly enjoyed the support of the Intelligence Service to turn from a common IT specialist into a millionaire, the beneficiary of numerous contracts with the state, an influential politician and, as an MP, a member of the parliamentary committee which surveys the activity of the Romanian Intelligence Service.