Integrity and Corruption

The fight against corruption rolls on in Romania unabated, at all levels, as illustrated by the latest cases

Florentin Căpitănescu, 17.03.2015, 14:13

The Romanian Anti-Corruption Directorate continues its triumphal march, leaving behind prime victims in the world of public administration, which is rife with people who don’t care much about how legal their activities are. The targets of the ACD are not just politicians, such as mayors or county council chairmen, or MPs and ministers. They are also members of the system built to combat the corrupt practices that held sway in the 25 years that have passed since the fall of communism. On Monday, anti-corruption prosecutors opened a case against the president of the National Integrity Agency, Horia Georgescu, suspected of abuse of office.

In 2008 and 2009, when working for the National Agency for the Restitution of Property, Georgescu allegedly endorsed reports that over-evaluated several buildings. The damage to the state amounts to 75 million Euro. This case is not exactly a surprise, considering that recently it was proven that anyone could fall under the scrutiny of the ACD, but it is intriguing, given that Georgescu seemed to be a very capable, well-meaning civil servant, inspiring confidence. At the same time, the case might throw the National Integrity Agency in a dangerous area where it has lost public trust, which a large number of politicians and agency members have struggled to gain.

The National Integrity Agency has been praised in European Commission reports, as one of the institutions that absolutely had to exist in the Romanian justice system. That was also the case of the directorate in charge of prosecuting organized crime, the DIICOT, as it is known by its Romanian name. Its head prosecutor, Alina Bica, was detained late last year. The similarities between the Georgescu and Bica cases do not stop here. The latter is accused of abuse of office as well, as a member of the same agency that Georgescu worked in, for the same charge of over-evaluating property to be restituted.

However, there is a full half of the glass. The justice system is proving that it can achieve self-cleaning by ridding itself of even higher-up people who have broken the rules. Also on Monday, the ACD opened several cases against Radu Mazare, mayor of Constanta, Romania’s Black Sea port. He is rather influential in the Social Democratic Party, and stands accused of several counts of bribery, abuse of office and conflict of interest, even though he has been holding on tightly to his mayoral seat for 15 years, and in spite of the fact that he has a lot of media notoriety.