Spectacular Developments in Anti-Corruption Campaign

Deputy Elena Udrea is the most spectacular catch of Romanian anti-corruption prosecutors this year. But the list of people targeted by investigators is still open.

Warning: Trying to access array offset on null in /home/web/rri.ro/public/wp-content/themes/rri/template-parts/content.php on line 98
Bogdan Matei, 11.02.2015, 13:10

One of the most striking, noisy and unbelievable episodes in Romania’s post-communist political life has come to a close. On Tuesday night, after lengthy hearings at the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, Elena Udrea was arrested under charges of money laundering and influence peddling. It is probably the end of a career that has made headlines and opened news bulletins for almost a decade.

A former presidential adviser, parliament member, minister of tourism and development, leader of the People’s Movement Party and, in November 2014, a candidate in the presidential election, Ms. Udrea had an impressive political rise. Her personal life seems to have been marked fundamentally by two men: her former husband, businessman Dorin Cocos, arrested for corruption as well, and former president Traian Basescu. Intangible during Basescu’s ten-year term in office, Udrea fell less than two months after her political mentor concluded his second and last presidential term. During that decade, there have been countless mayors, ministers and MPs who publicly hailed Ms Udrea as a major political, administrative and even academic figure. To please the president, politicians would try to win the goodwill of the most influential woman of the regime.

Today, Elena Udrea is all alone. On Sunday, the day before she was arrested, the People’s Movement Party elected a new president, in a special congress attended by Basescu himself. But the undaunted Udrea constantly claimed she is the victim of revenge and that investigations targeted her after she had filed a criminal complaint with the National Anti-Corruption Directorate against the current interim director of the Romanian Intelligence Service, general Florian Coldea. The allegation is particularly implausible considering that Coldea himself was seen as one of ex-president Basescu’s most loyal men.

Udrea is now one of the scores of politicians who end up behind bars for corruption offences. And the wheels of justice continue to turn. Senators Ion Ariton and Varujan Vosganian, both of them former ministers of the economy, are also subject to investigations. Ariton, a rather low-profile politician, faces charges of accessory to abuse of office and misuse of authority, in a file in which Elena Udrea is, again, the key character. In turn, Vosganian, a sophisticated public figure, a Liberal leader, talented novelist and former head of the Armenian community in Romania, is accused on having set up an organized crime group, of abuse of office and embezzlement.