April 11, 2017
Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 11.04.2017, 14:17
STOCK EXCHANGE — The Bucharest Stock Exchange has today launched an Internet platform, which is to offer the amplest information on the shares listed. Under the name InvestingRomania.com the platform will include information about 13 major companies on Romania’s capital market. Published data will come from several sources, including a press agency as well as analyses and estimates by financial pundits, current and periodical reports sent to the stock exchange. Users will also get access to a platform which will allow for the selection of portfolios on the basis of two types of indicators – of transactions and financial.
ANTI-GRAFT Anti-corruption prosecutors in Romania have ordered restrictions for 60 days against former tennis player Dinu Pescariu and businessman Claudiu Florica for abuse of office in the so-called Microsoft 2 file. At the same time the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) has sent to the general prosecutor a request from Romania’s president concerning the penal prosecution of Gabriel Sandu who was communication minister at the time. According to prosecutors, the two have allegedly paid over 2 million euros to Sandu through a businessman to ease a public bid. The prejudice in the Microsoft 2 file stays at roughly 51 million euros. In October 2016 Sandu got a prison sentence in the Microsoft 1 file, one of Romania’s biggest corruption rows with 60 million euros in bribes and 27 million euros in prejudices to the state.
DRAFT — Romanian MPs are today debating and voting on a draft law on decriminalizing the conflict of interests through Penal Code amendments. The draft stipulates that unless a public interest prejudice is done, the hiring of a relative or person, the public servant was in a job relation with, is no longer considered a crime. We recall the Chamber of Deputies is a decision-making forum in Romania. Romanian MPs have recently passed an amendment to the law on the status of deputies and senators through which they have obtained a Penal Code derogation. Under that amendment the hiring to the cabinets of people with whom the former worked in the past five years is no longer a conflict of interests.
G7 — Foreign Ministers from G7 countries have convened in the Italian city of Lucca in an attempt to adopt a common stand over the Syrian conflict. The summit is also being attended by US secretary of state Rex Tillerson who is later expected to fly to Moscow in a bid to convince Russia to cease its support to president Bashar al-Assad. The move comes after the USA on Friday launched missiles against a Syrian government air base in response to a gas attack that killed 89 people in the country’s northwest, an attack that Washington blames on the government troops. Damascus has denied any allegations.
NATO Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis has sent a letter to Parliament asking MPs to respond to a NATO request and endorse the setting up of a counterintelligence unit on the Romanian territory. The new structure will be carrying out its activity within the Command of the Multinational Division Southeast in Bucharest. Romania already hosts two NATO structures founded following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. According to the allies, such a unit would become useful in the context of the challenges NATO is currently facing. The unit will be supporting NATO structures and troops with information over alleged espionage or sabotage acts coming from some hostile forces. The decision on setting up the unit comes against the intense preparations Romania is seeing for the upcoming large-scale NATO exercise the country has hosted so far. According to the US ambassador in Bucharest the event will be attended by 30 thousand military from several allied countries.
