Protocol between SRI and General Prosecutors’ Office, in the spotlight

Collaboration between intelligence service and prosecutors sparks controversy

Roxana Vasile, 04.04.2018, 13:44

Claudiu Manda, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee overseeing the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) said last fall that 65 collaboration protocols between SRI and various state institutions were in force. One of them, namely the one signed with the General Prosecutors Office, was declassified and made public last Friday.

The document was signed back in 2009 by the then Prosecutor General Laura Codruta Kovesi, who now heads the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, and George Maior, the SRI chief at the time. Based on this document, SRI granted assistance to prosecutors, with joint operative teams being set up in order to investigate certain misdeeds.

The politicians in Power have hailed the declassification and have argued that this document allowed for some abnormal agreements. Calin Popescu Tariceanu, Speaker of the Senate and leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Romania (ALDE), in the ruling coalition, has said:

Calin Popescu Tariceanu: “We will see in detail what these abnormal understandings are all about, as they have allowed the intelligence services to play the role of judicial police, something specific to the communist era and to the communist regimes that obviously had no consideration for justice.

The right-of-centre parliamentary opposition said in turn that in keeping with the principle of transparency, making public the collaboration protocol is natural in a democratic state. Leader of the Save Romania Union (USR), Dan Barna:

Dan Barna: “Ever since it entered Parliament, Save Romania Union has been promoting the transparency principle. So this decision of the National Intelligence Service, to make public a protocol that does not endanger national security in any way, is only natural in a democratic state, the kind of state that Romania tries to be.

There are plenty of voices supporting the scenario of a ‘parallel state, where important institutions have allegedly committed abuse in the shadow of secret arrangements. Nevertheless, the chief of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, Laura Codruta Kovesi, says this theory is false, and the collaboration between the General Prosecutors Office and the Intelligence Service complies with the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Laura Codruta Kovesi: “What this protocol did was create a unitary procedure so that everybody worked in the same direction. The law was being applied in different ways, hence the need to harmonise procedures. This is the reason why other judicial institutions signed protocols with SRI as well, its not only the case of the Prosecutors Office.

Fearing that by signing the protocol between the General Prosecutors Office and the Romanian Intelligence Service prosecutors and prosecutors offices have come to rely on the SRI in their investigations, the National Union of Romanian Judges and the Romanian Magistrates Association have asked the General Prosecutors Office and SRI to make public all protocols and cooperation agreements signed since 1990 to date. Moreover, they have also asked the Supreme Defence Council to make public all its decisions related to justice, made since 1990.

(translated by: Elena Enache)