Former prime minister, prosecuted

The Romanian political scene continues to be shaken by the scandal of the vaccine purchase during the pandemic.

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Bogdan Matei, 07.12.2023, 14:00

Florin-Vasile Cîţu is not exactly an ordinary politician. Born on April 1, 1972, he graduated from Grinell College, in Iowa, United States at the age of 24. Also in Iowa, caught driving under the influence, Cîțu was sentenced to two days in prison and had to pay a fine of 1,000 dollars. In the US he was also sued for failing to pay a debt of about 6,700 dollars to the Maryland National Bank. For a while, Florin Cîţu held the position of economist at the National Bank of New Zealand, after which he repatriated and entered the Romanian banking system. He was fired, worked for a while as an analyst and financial consultant, after which he entered politics and, since 2016, he has been a National Liberal Party (PNL) senator, now in his second mandate. With the evident support of President Klaus Iohannis he became a party leader and, for less than a year, he was prime minister, leading the governing coalition made up of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Save Romania Union (USR) and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania (UDMR). Later he allegedly fell into the president’s disfavor, he quarreled with the USR members, his government was dismissed by a motion of no confidence and his Liberal colleagues removed him from the party leadership.

And as of Wednesday, Florin-Vasile Cîţu was also put under criminal investigation by the National Anticorruption Directorate, for being accessory to abuse of office in the case of the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. In the same file, the former USR health ministers, Vlad Voiculescu and Ioana Mihăilă, as well as the Secretary of State in the Helath Ministry Andrei Baciu, a PNL member, are also accused of abuse of office. According to the prosecutors, Cîțu and his former subordinates would have approved the purchase of a much larger number of vaccine doses than were needed in Romania and would have created a damage of one billion euros.

„What I can tell you is that I exercised my duties as prime minister in compliance with the legislation in force. I trust the justice system and I believe that the truth will come out during this investigation” – the former prime minister told journalists. The current health minister, social democrat Alexandru Rafila, stated that Romania ordered a total of approximately 80 million doses of the available COVID-19 vaccines, of which 35 million were supplied. The Romanian state, Rafila added, paid a total of 2.5 billion lei (the equivalent of 500 million euros) for the vaccines it received. The press considers the sums huge and the amounts of vaccine disproportionate for a population of less than 20 million that is very reluctant to vaccination. (LS)