Arrest orders in corruption cases
Wednesday, November 16, was a prolific day for the Romanian anti-corruption prosecutors.
Roxana Vasile, 17.11.2016, 13:50
Each day in Romania brings out to the public new disclosures related to corruption cases and corrupt people with high-ranking positions. On Wednesday the former euro MP Adrian Severin received a definitive sentence to 4 years in prison for bribe taking and influence peddling. The Social Democrat will serve his sentence in the Rahova Penitentiary where he gave himself up on the same day.
A former foreign minister and ex-president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Adrian Severin was accused together with another two euro MEPs, from Slovenia and Austria respectively, of having accepted to receive 100 thousand euros annually from several journalists with the Sunday Times British publication, who were making an undercover investigation, in exchange for proposing amendments to the expert committees of the European Parliament, on the one hand, and for voting against some amendments that did not comply with the interests of the trade companies which the journalists claimed to support, on the other hand.
The facts occurred in the period December 2010 – March 2011. Adrian Severin has stubbornly claimed that it was all a setup plotted by people who acted as agents provocateurs with an underlying political motivation. “What started as a journalistic joke ended up in a legal joke” wrote the former euro MP on his Facebook page.
The president of the Permanent Electoral Authority in Romania, Ana Maria Pătru, also came under the prosecutors’ scrutiny. Less than one month ahead of the legislative elections, she was remanded into custody being charged with influence peddling and money laundering. Indicted for having favored a company from which the Authority bought computer software, Ana Maria Pătru announced her resignation.
Secretary of state Adrian Sanda also came under the prosecutors’ fire. Head of the Secretariat for the recognition of the merits of those people who fought against the Communist regime instated in Romania between 1945-1989, Adrian Sanda was arrested together with another 6 people, in a case related to the illegal granting of the title of fighter in the 1989 revolution. The investigators hold information according to which at least 3 million Romanians illegally received revolutionary indemnities although they did not go out in the streets during the anti-Communist uprising. After Adrian Sanda was arrested by prosecutors, the PM Dacian Cioloş dismissed him.
Another former MP, Florin Aurelian Popescu, received a definitive one-year prison sentence, being charged with conflict of interests and misrepresentation. At present, Florin Popescu is in prison, where he is serving another 2-year sentence that he received in a different file, in which he was accused of having asked from a businessman tens of tons of grilled chicken which he gave to people as electoral incentive in the 2012 local elections.
