A high profile court case
A high-level corruption case involving espionage and treason among others has come to an end in Romania.
Bogdan Matei, 04.12.2013, 13:14
For some time now, the fight against corruption has ceased to be mere rhetoric in Romania. Perceived by opinion polls conducted a few years ago as the country’s most corrupt politician, the former Social Democratic prime minister Adrian Nastase has already served time in prison for corruption. Tens of other former and current ministers, MPs, prefects and mayors from across the political spectrum are being investigated, indicted and sentenced for crimes ranging from peddling in influence to bribe taking.
As a first, two such high-profile names were sentenced for treason on Tuesday. Former members of the coalition cabinet led by the Liberal Calin Popescu Tariceanu between 2004 and 2008, the former Conservative economy minister Codrut Seres and the former communications minister Zsolt Nagy, a member of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, were sentenced by the High Court of Cassation and Justice to 6 and 5 years in prison, respectively, in a case related to strategic privatisation.
A number of low-ranking government officials, two international consultants, the Bulgarian citizen Stamen Stanchev and the Russian Vadim Benyatov, were also sentenced to 11 and 10 years in prison for espionage. The international cast of this spy thriller features several other foreign citizens, including a Czech, a Turkish and a Romanian-born British national.
All these people were accused of creating a cross-border criminal group between May 2005 and November 2006 aimed at obtaining secret information about the privatisation of several Romanian strategic companies in the energy and telecommunications sectors in exchange for financial compensation. Their illicit activities targeted the privatisation of companies such as Electrica Muntenia Sud, Romaero, Avioane Craiova, the National Telecommunications Company and the Romanian Postal Service, the sale of a number of Petrom shares and the listing of 46% of Romtelecom’s shares.
Telephone conversations recorded by the special services have revealed secret deals over the privatisation of several energy companies. The former economy minister Codrut Seres, for example, even promised the Bulgarian consultant Stamen Stanchev to initiate a government decision to enable the sale of Petrom shares to the criminal group.
The rulings passed on Tuesday are not yet final and may be challenged, but experts say the court is not very likely to pass more lenient sentences during appeal.
