Anti Corruption Files

Further information emerges daily on the high level corruption cases in Romania

Roxana Vasile, 25.11.2014, 16:25

Another high level corruption case is now shaking the Romanian political scene. The Romanian anti-corruption prosecutors are trying to expose the complicated affair plotted by the National Authority for Property Restitution and are trying to tighten the noose around those suspected of having masterminded a large-scale fraud. The former president of the Authority, Crinuta Dumitrean, as well as the former vice-president, Oana Vasilescu, on Monday were arrested in the file in which Alina Bica, the head of the Directorate for investigating organized crime and terrorism, had already been arrested.

The 3 are accused of abuse of office when they were members of the committee that was dealing with the retrocession of land confiscated by the communist regime. In 2011 they are supposed to have accepted to pay to a businessman the equivalent of almost 84 million Euros worth of damages for a park of 13 hectares in Bucharest, although, in reality, the land was worth much less.

According to anti-corruption prosecutors, the damage stands at more than 60 million Euros. At the time when the illegality was committed, the committee also included Liberal Democrat MP Catalin Teodorescu and the ethnic Hungarian Marko Atilla Gabor, for whose arrest prosecutors asked the approval of the Chamber of Deputies.

Other people were also arrested in the same file, investigated with the help of the Romanian Intelligence Service. Businessman Dorin Cocos, the former husband of Elena Udrea, the leader of the People’s Movement Party, allegedly asked for 10 million Euros to intervene at the National Authority for Property Restitution in favor of the one requesting damages. The same Dorin Cocos, now in preventive custody, is being investigated in another big corruption case, the Microsoft affair, regarding the purchase of IT licenses for the Romanian schools.

The National Anti-Corruption Directorate has asked for the prosecution of 9 former ministers who, together with people working for the companies involved in the development of the project, would allegedly have asked for over 20 million dollars of the 54 million dollars paid by the government for the respective contract. One of the ministers involved in the fraud is the former minister of communications Dan Nica, who became a euro MP this year.

The president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz has confirmed that he received from the Romanian National Anti-Corruption Directorate the request for lifting Dan Nica’s immunity. Another high level corruption file in Romania at present, involving top level politicians, is the one related to illegal forest retrocession which is supposed to have deprived the state of more than 300 million Euros.