Senate Chairman Cancels Trip To ALDE Europe Congress After Legal Woes Emerge

“The chairman (Calin Popescu Tariceanu, ed.) cancelled his trip to Madrid,” sources from within the leadership of Romanian party ALDE told MEDIAFAX on Thursday.

The ALDE Europe congress, scheduled to take place until Saturday, is also due to discuss the exclusion of the Romanian party, following a request by an Austrian member of the pan-European political group.

Tariceanu denied the accusation on Wednesday night, calling it a “ridiculous spectacle” and an attempt to save General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar from the dismissal procedure launched by Justice Minister Tudorel Toader.

Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) requested the Senate on Wednesday to lift parliamentary immunity for chairman Calin Popescu Tariceanu, who it intends to indict under the accusation of receiving an $800,000 for a state contract signed during his time as prime minister.

DNA prosecutors accuse Tariceanu of receiving the bribe from representatives of an Austrian company in exchange for approving several additional clauses to a state contract, with the sum representing 10% of the clauses’ value.

The money, received through multiple fictitious contracts signed with offshore entities in 2007 and 2008 – when the current Senate Chairman was serving as the country’s prime minister – was then used to finance the 2008 parliamentary electoral campaign.

It is speculated that the contract in question was a softwarre licensing agreement with Microsoft, mediated by local representatives of former German-Japanese joint venture Fujitsu-Siemens Computers.

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