Senate Chairman: Corruption Probe Is Meant To Intimidate Me

“This so-called approach of prosecutors has a well-defined target, to intimidate me and those who are with me in this fight to signal the serious abuses happening in Romania. It has the goal to amplify confusion among citizens,” said the Senate chairman.

He added that the ruling coalition must finish its process of reforming the country’s judicial bills, in order to stop the judicial abuses it frequently accused.

“The laws organizing to judiciary must be finished, and the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes of course, so as to not allow future discretionary action from prosecutors,” said Tariceanu.

“What will happen in the Parliament in the moment of the vote regarding my prosecution is not a vote related to me. It’s one to demonstrate the law must equally protect all citizens against abuses and is the right of everyone to have and receive their due respect,” he added.

Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) requested the Senate on November 8 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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