Top-level Suspension in the Romanian Intelligence Service
All news channels in Bucharest are trying to measure the magnitude of the tremor that rocked the Romanian Intelligence Service.
Bogdan Matei, 13.01.2017, 13:26
The first deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service, lieutenant general Florian Coldea, has practically been suspended from office and is subject to an internal investigation. The communiqué issued by the Romanian Intelligence Service, which has been given extensive coverage by the entire media, reads that following information circulated in the public space on lieutenant general Florian Coldea, and which make the object of a preliminary investigation, the director of the Romanian Intelligence Service ordered, in keeping with the current procedures, the setting up of a special commission to investigate possible law infringement and violations of deontological rules. To that aim, until the completion of the investigation, general Florian Coldea is suspended from office, and his prerogatives as first deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service will be taken over by the director of the Service, Eduard Hellvig.
Pundits say the information circulated in the public space refers mainly to a series of accusations launched by the former MP Sebastian Ghiţă. In a video recording, broadcast by the TV channel he runs, Ghiţă claims to have spent his vacation together with the deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service and his wife, in the Seychelles. A controversial character, the former Social Democrat MP who later joined the ranks of a marginal, Euro-sceptical party, which failed to reach the necessary threshold to be represented in Parliament, Ghiţă is reported missing since the end of 2016. An arrest warrant has been issued on his name for corruption. Enjoying little credibility, Ghiţă is however trying to leave the impression of a vigilante. He says he will disclose information on people in the top management of the Romanian Intelligence Service and the National Anticorruption Directorate because, in his opinion, things are advancing in Romania at an increasingly fast pace towards a sort of terror that no one will be able to resist.
Terror, dictatorship, police state, prosecutors’ republic; these are the favourite words used by the politicians who are suspected, investigated or accused of corruption, to whom Coldea and the head of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, Laura Codruţa Kovesi, are the most detested and detestable public figures. Seemingly intangible for a long period of time, Coldea seems to be extremely vulnerable nowadays, and there are voices saying that he runs the risk of seeing his successful and bright career as an intelligence officer coming to an end, at the age of only 45. He became famous in 2005, when he coordinated the release of three Romanian journalists kidnapped in Iraq. The then president Traian Băsescu appointed him first deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service. This means that he has actually served as number one at operative level.
Coldea has maintained his position for more than a decade, under the helm of three civil directors – Radu Timofte, George Maior and Eduard Hellvig – and remained the strongman of the Service, even after Basescu completed his term in office, being succeeded by Klaus Iohannis. Now, according to the pundits’ speculations, Coldea has become the victim of his own creation, because, they say, he was the one who invented Ghita, who allegedly enjoyed the support of the Intelligence Service to turn from a common IT specialist into a millionaire, the beneficiary of numerous contracts with the state, an influential politician and, as an MP, a member of the parliamentary committee which surveys the activity of the Romanian Intelligence Service.
