Justice and Anti-Corruption

The former prime minister of Romania, Adrian Nastase, has been released early from prison for good conduct, after serving one third of a 4 year-and-a-half term for corruption.

România Internațional, 22.08.2014, 13:29

The former prime minister of Romania, Adrian Nastase, has been released early from prison for good conduct, after serving one third of a 4 year-and-a-half term for corruption.

In late 2004, after four years of ruling the government and the Social Democratic Party with an iron hand, it seemed that nothing could prevent Adrian Nastase from winning the presidential election. Nevertheless, Nastase lost dramatically, in the second round, to the unpredictable Traian Basescu. Nastase’s unexpected defeat marked the beginning of his downfall. He was prosecuted on corruption charges in three separate files and the Court sent him to prison in two of them, for embezzlement serving his 2004 election campaign and for receiving undue benefits respectively. Earlier in March 2011 Nastase had been given a 3-year suspended sentence for blackmail, following another trial which began in 2006.

The Court’s decision in 2012, to send Nastase to prison for two years, was a first in Romania. Adrian Nastase, aged 62 at the time, became the first high-ranking leader of the post-Communist era to receive a prison sentence. This case opened an entirely new era for the Romanian justice system, which, after being long blamed for choosing to close its eyes on high level corruption, seemed to finally free itself from political influence. Adrian Nastase’s imprisonment put an end to his political career.

Nevertheless, Nastase has always claimed that the files instrumented by the National Anticorruption Directorate against him were politically influenced and that he was a victim of the head of state, Traian Basescu. In Romania, Adrian Nastase was perceived as a symbol of high-level corruption, something that the magistrates did not fail to mention when they motivated their decision to send him to jail.

The New York Times viewed the decision of the Romanian court as a gesture of political maturity, while France Press wrote that the verdict against the former Romanian Prime Minister was a rare case in Europe. On the other hand, the trend launched by Nastase, to present Traian Basescu as a vindictive man who destroys his political enemies has gained ground in Romania.

Another opponent of Traian Basescu, the founder of the Conservative Party, Dan Voiculescu, recently imprisoned for 10 years for money laundering, claims to also be the president’s victim. No wonder Voiculescu hails Adrian Nastase’s early release from prison. However, the speculations that President Traian Basescu influences the prosecutors seem ridiculous, given that the president’s younger brother is currently under preventive arrest on charges of influence peddling.