Nomination for the National Anticorruption Directorate
Justice Minister Tudorel Toader has nominated Adina Florea as the new chief prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate.
Ştefan Stoica, 07.09.2018, 11:59
Adina Florea, a prosecutor with the Court of Appeal in Constanta, southeastern Romania, has been nominated by Justice Minister Tudorel Toader to fill up the position of chief-prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate, left vacant after Laura Codruta Kovesi was removed from office. In her application, Adina Florea admits that, in recent years, Romania has made important steps towards combating corruption, anticorruption prosecutors playing a key role in this process, something that both external and internal analyses have revealed.
Still, Adina Florea condemns what she has labeled numerous violations of the rule of law on the part of some prosecutors within the Directorate. Adina Florea says some of their actions are at odds with the professional standards and unbiased attitude dictated by their job description, at times even in breach of the law.
Adina Florea told the public radio about the priorities of her term in office, should she be appointed: “I will carry out an assessment of the activity of the National Anticorruption Directorate, a professional analysis of acquittals, which will be subjected to a careful analysis to see if they stand, as well as a selection of prosecutors working for the Directorate, which will be operated by the Prosecutors Section of the Superior Council of Magistracy, as per the amended Law no. 304”.
The Save Romania Union in opposition accused the Justice Minister for lack of transparency in making his nomination and the arguments he used to back it.
Save Romanian Union MP Stelian Ion: “The Minister did not clearly explain what motivated him to nominate Adina Florea. We can guess some of his motives, because we took a quick glance at Mrs. Florea’s managerial project and we found some of her points to be consistent to the letter with the criticism Minister Toader brought against the former head of the Directorate, Laura Codruta Kovesi”.
Procedure stipulates that once a nomination is made, the Superior Council of Magistracy is to issue a consultative opinion before the President can sign the appointment decree. Many wonder what Klaus Iohannis will do, considering that he dismissed Kovesi only when forced by a controversial Constitutional Court ruling. The President has the possibility to reject the proposition. The president did the same a while back when he first refused to remove Kovesi from office. Minister Toader then referred the matter to the Court, which issued a ruling sanctioning a constitutional conflict between the President and the Justice Minister.
The opposition claims that dismissing Kovesi, whom Romania’s foreign partners have often praised for her efforts to put corrupt high-ranking officials behind bars, was part of the ruling coalition’s plans to undermine the fight against corruption, Reuters reports. The news agency also writes that, with Kovesi at its helm, the Directorate prosecuted MPs, ministers and mayors, sanctioning conflicts of interest, abuses, frauds and bribe taking in exchange for preferential contracts.
