New corruption cases on the prosecutors’ table
The anti-corruption offensive continues in Romania.
Bogdan Matei, 06.03.2015, 13:55
There are, among the high-profile Romanians charged with corruption, some who have managed to make the public feel sorry for them. Police state, prosecutors’ land, show-like trials and televised justice are some of the arguments meant to dampen the prosecutors’ enthusiasm. Luckily, those who do criticize the anti-corruption campaign are rather few, as the media and the public displayed their satisfaction at the prosecutors finally doing their job after 25 years of complete silence on their part. Men and women who used to be public figures are today being brought to court in handcuffs. With no exception, they claim to be the innocent victims of revenge.
The best example of such case is the one of former development and tourism minister, Elena Udrea, the most influential character in the entourage of former President Traian Basescu. For months now, Elena Udrea, involved in a number of obscure affairs in the past 10 years, has been claiming she was jailed after being framed by politicians and the police. Caring little about her complaints, the High Court of Cassation and Justice rejected on Thursday her appeal to the pre-emptive arrest decided for alleged bribe taking and abuse of office.
An outspoken opponent of former President Traian Basescu, the Social Democrat PM Victor Ponta is assisting, every other day, to his relatives’ pilgrimage to the prosecutor’s office. On Thursday, for instance, it was the turn of the premier’s mother, Cornelia Naum, to be summoned at the office of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate in Ploiesti, in southern Romania, to be heard as witness in a case involving her son-in-law, Iulian Hertanu, currently under pre-emptive arrest for setting up a crime group, misuse of European funds and fiscal evasion. The PM’s sister has been previously heard in the same file.
The mayor of Ploiesti, Social Democrat mayor Iualian Badescu, is under a 30-day arrest for bribe taking and abuse of office. He is accused that in 2013 he received 100 thousand euros out of the due amount of 300 thousand that he had claimed in exchange for the illegal financing of the local football side, Petrolul.
The star of a tabloid TV station and founder of a populist party, which he managed to introduce in Parliament, Dan Diaconescu has recently received a definitive sentence of 5 years and 6 months in prison, for blackmail.
In his turn, the Chief of the Cardiovascular Department of a Bucharest hospital and one of the best Romanian cardiologists, Serban Bradisteanu, a former Social Democratic senator, received a one-year suspended prison sentence for having tried to delay the incarceration of former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase by invoking false health issues.
