Impressive Anti-Corruption Cases

This week looks like its going to be an eventful one in Romanian courts, with lots of cases opened, arrests and rulings issued

România Internațional, 03.02.2015, 13:50

Famous Romanian businessman Adrian Sarbu is a member of a select group, that of press magnates, which at this point in Romania has come to be a pejorative term. He is accused of instigation to tax evasion, money laundering and graft — crimes allegedly committed as the owner of a major media trust. In a scenario which has become all too common, Sarbu claims he is innocent and that he is the victim of a fabricated case.

Adrian Sarbu: “Everything is a fabrication, the charges are ridiculous. Here are the handcuffs, ok? No point in commenting further.”

With his discreet public presence, navigating in the shadows under every post-communist political regime, Sarbu has the reputation of a visionary, as he managed as early as the 1990s to bring to the domestic market a Western type management. However, his is not the only major case hitting the headlines this week. Four judges were convicted for bribe taking to provide undue help to businessman Dan Adamescu in a few cases of insolvency. The latter got a mandatory sentence of four years and four months, while one of the judges, Mircea Moldovan, was sentenced to no less than 22 years — an absolute record among magistrates. However, in that case the sentence is not final.

In another case pursued by the more and more active Anti-Corruption Directorate, a former president of the Romanian Boxing Federation, and a mayor in the country’s south east have been detained. The charges are that, in 2011, when they were organizing a boxing gala, they siphoned off a part of the money provided by the Ministry of Development for the organization of the event. In the same case, the Development Minister, Elena Udrea, and the Minister of the Economy, Ion Ariton, both currently holding seats in Parliament, are also under investigation. She has been painted into a corner, after being indicted last week in quite another corruption case. Udrea claimed that the new investigation was retaliation for the accusations she had made last week against the interim head of the Romanian Intelligence Service, Florian Coldea.

Those three cases, even if they involve famous business people, politicians and magistrates, are not the most spectacular by a long shot, which is not a trifle in a country in which that type of high level investigations were considered, not that far back, a virtual impossibility.