Corruption cases in Romania

New corruption cases have been revealed in Romania: the president of a County Council was caught taking bribe and is in pre-trial detention for 30 days, and two physicians have been arrested.

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Corina Cristea, 25.09.2023, 14:00

The news about the corruption case involving Dumitru Buzatu, one of the oldest and most influential leaders of the Social Democratic Party (in the ruling coalition), has been making the headlines in Romania. A member of Parliament from 1992 until 2012, when he was still elected president of the Vaslui County Council (one of the poorest counties in Romania), Dumitru Buzatu has gathered an impressive fortune, according to his latest wealth declaration which covers 4 pages. Among other things, he owns or is a co-owner of 10 agricultural, forestry or rural lands and five buildings. The agricultural and forest lands exceed 130 hectares. On Friday evening, he was caught by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate-DNA prosecutors with a bribe of 1.25 million lei (about 250 thousand Euros), money received from a businessman, Emil Savin, for favoring his company to obtain a contract for road rehabilitation works. In the report through which the DNA requested the court to arrest Buzatu, the businessman told the prosecutors that the president of the Vaslui County Council used to claim a percentage of at least 10% of the value of the works he entrusted to various contractors.

The businessman also claims that, for several years, he felt persecuted by Dumitru Buzatu, who allegedly contacted him several times in the last months and promised him that he would get involved in the dispute that Emil Savin’s company had it with the Vaslui County Council. The dispute was about a sum of money for the works done, outstanding payments in the last two years. The problems with the payment of the invoices had emerged as a result of misunderstandings regarding the bribe that the county council president was going to receive for having favored that company to obtain the contract. Following the evidence presented by the DNA prosecutors, on Saturday, the Vaslui Court decided on the preventive arrest for 30 days of Dumitru Buzatu, who was quickly excluded from the Social Democratic Party in the meantime, following this case.

In the same case, a technical expert was also arrested for bribe taking and influence peddling. The expert allegedly demanded over 700,000 lei (about 140 thousand Euros) from the representative of the construction company with which the Vaslui County Council had signed a contract for the rehabilitation of some roads with European funds. In exchange for the money, he was to draft an expert’s report favorable to the respective company and to intervene with the decision-makers so that they pay the invoices for the works done, worth about three million Euros.

In another case of corruption, this time in Bucharest, two physicians from the Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumo-Phthisiology were preventively arrested, last week, on charges of taking bribes from patients. Six other physicians were placed under judicial supervision, to be investigated in a state of freedom. The College of Physicians in Bucharest strongly condemns their gesture and distances itself from the cases of corruption in the health system, saying that it is not natural to blame all the physicians for what happens in isolated cases. (LS)