Romanian Labor Min Officially Charged With Bribery

The criminal investigation – according to article 200 of the Criminal Procedure Code – aims to collect the evidence necessary to prove the existence of a crime, to point to perpetrators and to set responsibility for each perpetrator, in order to find if a trial would be adequate.

According to the procedure, the defendants are heard by prosecutors, who inform them on the charges brought against them, then they are questioned regarding the facts included in the criminal investigation file. Later, the parties involved make statements in front of the investigator.

As criminal investigations have been initiated against the minister, article 109 of the Constitution grants Romanian head of state Traian Basescu the right to suspend Pacuraru.

Labor minister Paul Pacuraru was allegedly recorded while asking Gorj county liberal leader Ilie Morega to step in and ask the managers of the Oltenia National Coal Company (SNLO) and those of thermal power producers Turceni and Rovinari to grant contracts to his son’s company, Intratest.

Pacuraru said that, in a conversation with his son, Morega offered to facilitate a contract. The minister’s son, Mihnea Pacuraru, allegedly refused the offer politely, informing Morega that the mentioned contract had already been won through an auction. Pacuraru refused to reveal the value of contracts obtained by his son’s company in Gorj, adding that the only sums collected were for the “schooling of 45 people."

On September 24, 2007 the leadership of Romania’s National Anticorruption Department, or DNA, asked for the presidency’s consent to start the criminal investigation against labor minister Nicolae Paul Anton Pacuraru

Later, after a Constitutional Court decision, the procedure for the investigation of current and former ministers was amended, namely if the ministers are also members of Parliament, the Parliament needs to approve of the investigation.

Thus, the Senate needed to approve the investigation against Pacuraru.

On August 26, the Senate accepted the DNA notice.