Trial Btw Oil Tycoon – Intelligence Service Suspended
The articles refer to the Law on national safety and the one referring to the protection of classified information.
The Bucharest Court of Appeals admitted on Tuesday the exception raised in the trial, which questions the legality of tapping Patriciu’s phone calls over a two-year period. The court ruled to suspend the trial.
Last week, the businessman’s lawyers raised an unconstitutionality exception regarding Law no. 51/1991 on national safety and Law no. 182/2002 on the protection of classified information, and asked the court to send the file to the Constitutional Court to see if the mentioned articles observe the constitution.
Mid-February 2007, Patriciu’s lawyers submitted with the Bucharest Court a complaint against the Intelligence Service regarding the illegal tapping of several of Patriciu’s phone calls.
The panel of judges with the Bucharest Court of Appeals asked the Public Ministry to communicate the number of interception warrants issued in Patriciu’s name and in that of Romania’s second largest oil company Rompetrol between 1994 and 2005, if there are any.
On May 11, 2007 the Bucharest Court ruled that the businessman’s right to privacy was breached, right stipulated in article 8 from the European Convention for Human Rights, and forced the SRI to pay moral damages worth RON50,000. The Service appealed the sentence.