Justice Minister Tudorel Toader said on Wednesday evening that he was not surprised by the decision of the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR), which admitted the notification filed by the Speaker of the Deputies Chamber on the existence of a legal conflict of a constitutional nature between the Public Ministry,…
The post Reactions after secret protocols between the Public Ministry and SRI ruled unconstitutional. JusMin Toader: Not surprised. PG Lazar: Optimistic current prosecution documents will be deemed legal. UNJR’s Garbovan: CCR finds one of most serious conflicts between state powers appeared first on Nine O' Clock.
Deputies’ Chamber adopted on Wednesday the law stipulating the declassification of the Decision no.17/2005 of the Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT), and providing that the sentences in which “evidence” was administered “by special technical means” during the existence of the documents issued under the decision on which the law refers are subject to revision. The draft law was adopted with 174 pros, 92 cons and 4 abstentions. The Deputies’ Chamber is the decisional body in this case. During the plenary debates, the Opposition claimed that the ruling parties want to reopen certain cases; the deputies of the Liberal National Party (PNL), Save Romania Union (USR) and People’s Movement Party (PMP) were warned that Romania has become a police state, just as before 1989. “The father of the protocols is Tariceanu. In 2005, he signed as Prime Minister the Decision 231 regulating the national strategy for the fight against corruption, which was clearly establishing in the Annex 2, items 4 and 5, the obligation to conclude such protocols between the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ), and the other institutions involved in the fight against corruption, since it was appreciated that this is a matter of smooth collaboration between institutions, without meaning that this was in addition to the law. The lawfulness of some protocols is not decided in a party meeting, but only by a judge. You are planning to reopen all the cases since 2005 until the entry into force of this law”, stated the USR MP Stelian Ion in the plenary session. He added that USR will challenge the law to CCR if it will be adopted. PNL MP Gabriel Andronache said the Liberals will oppose to the draft law, and PMP MP Marius Pascan also stated that his party will not vote for the law. In reply, UDMR MP Marton Arpad said he is back in the same police system of which he hoped he will get rid in 1989, with illegal interceptions and with the interference of the secret services in judiciary. “I have lived for 35 years in a police state, in which the Securitate was listening everybody, and the Securitate guys were picking you up and judges were condemning you as those guys wanted. On the morning of December 22, 1989, around 9.00 AM, when I got out in the street, I got out hoping we’ll have a different kind of state. But I slowly realized that I am back in the same system of which I was hoping to get rid. It’s much sadder that there are young people in this country who think that this way of acting of the secret services that are judging instead of judges, who are illegally listening everybody, while judiciary is acting based on protocols, is normal. We do not agree with such a system, because this is not justice, from our point of view”, he stated. PSD MP Mircea Draghici, one of the initiators of the draft law, asked the Opposition why they are afraid of declassifying the protocols. “The protocols added to the law, that’s why we are declassifying them, to see their content. Remember the history report mentioning over 300 joint operative teams that worked to do justice? Why are you afraid to see these protocols? Why do you fear? Let’s see them! No one, not an issuer made any step to declassify them. What should we, the Parliament, do? Should we be indifferent to the political police, while 500,000 citizens were affected?”, Draghici stated in the plenary session. The deputy of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), Marian Cucsa, also claimed the large number of interceptions. “I wouldn’t like to tell to my children about the practices of these times, we are the country in which 6 million people are listened”, he said. The draft law on the declassification of certain documents provides the possibility of those who consider themselves prejudiced by the consequences of the documents concluded according to the CSAT Decision no.17/2005 to address to the competent courts, in order to establish that their fundamental rights and freedoms have been violated and to repair the suffered prejudice. “Art.1 – (1) By way of derogation from the provisions of Art.24 of the Law no.182/20902 on the protection of the classified information, as subsequently amended and supplemented, the Decision no.17/2005 of the Supreme Council of National Defense on the fight against corruption, fraud and money laundering is declassified, together with all the documents containing classified information relied upon or concluded according with or based on the Decision no.17/2005 of the Supreme Council of National Defense on the fight against corruption, fraud and money laundering”, the law provides. “The law also states that starting with the date of its entry into force, all these documents “are declassified by the law, without being required any other procedure”, and “the legal consequences of these documents cease”. Furthermore, all the information included in these documents becomes information of public interest starting on the date of the entry into force of the law. Also, the law provides the declassification, starting on the date of its entry into force, of all the cooperation plans made by the National Anticorruption Directorate and the Romanian Intelligence Service according to Art.15 from the Cooperation Protocol no.003064 since February 4, 2009, concluded between the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice and the Romanian Intelligence Service in order to accomplish their duties in the national security field, as well as of all the protocols and/or collaboration and cooperation agreements concluded between the institutions of the Romanian state, the Romanian Intelligence Service, the National Anticorruption Directorate, the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, the Superior Council of Magistracy, and the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice. “People who consider themselves prejudiced, in any legitimate right or interest, by the consequences caused by the documents mentioned in Art.1, have the possibility to…
On Wednesday, the Constitutional Court postponed its debates on the House Speaker’s notification regarding a conflict of a constitutional nature between Parliament and the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice (PICCJ) generated by the latter’s conclusion of a secret protocol with the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) in 2016. The concerned parties had until October 22 to send their points of view to the Court. A new meeting will focus on this topic on November 28. The notification was lodged with the Constitutional Court on October 8, being signed by House Deputy Speaker Florin Iordache, to whom House Speaker Liviu Dragnea had delegated his prerogatives on the same day. On August 24, Darius Valcov, aide to Premier Viorica Dancila, published on his Facebook page a protocol that the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice (PICCJ) and the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) had signed on 7 December 2016. The day after, Justice Minister Tudorel Toader announced on Facebook the start of the legal procedure to evaluate the managerial activity of Prosecutor General Augustin Lazar. In response, the Prosecutor General stated that the protocols are a false topic and all aspects of interest concerning this topic were brought to the knowledge of the Superior Council of the Magistracy and the Justice Ministry. On September 25, House lawmaker Florin Iordache (PSD) stated that the protocols that the PICCJ concluded with the SRI are inadmissible, and Parliament is very clearly thinking of notifying the CCR about a juridical conflict of a constitutional nature. “By signing these protocols, the Prosecutor General added to the Criminal Procedure Code and transformed the SRI into a criminal prosecution body. We are analysing whether this is a constitutional conflict and whether it is necessary to notify the Constitutional Court,” Florin Iordache was stating. On Monday, the Romania Initiative civic movement notified the PICCJ about a possible criminal conflict of interest in the case concerning House Speaker Liviu Dragnea’s decision to delegate his prerogatives to Florin Iordache and the latter’s notification lodged with the Constitutional Court regarding the existence of protocols of collaboration between the prosecutor’s offices and the SRI, which, according to the organisation, could be used as a pretext to revise court sentences or to eliminate evidence from criminal dossiers.
Rise Project announced on Saturday evening, through a Facebook post entitled ##Teleormanleaks, that a suitcase with key information from inside the Tel Drum corporation, to which the prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) had no access during searches, was found in the rural area of the Teleorman County. The suitcase allegedly contains thousands of documents, phone numbers, e-mails, photos and videos from the company’s events. “We inform you that «Teleorman Leaks» exists. A suitcase with key information from inside the Tel Drum corporation, to which the DNA prosecutors had no access when they made searches on the company’s premises and computers, last year, was found in the rural area of the Teleorman County, by a local, right on his property. The local contacted a Rise Project source in the county” is the message posted by Rise Project on Sunday evening on their Facebook page, entitled #Teleormanleaks. According to the Facebook message, the suitcase allegedly contains “a black hard disk in which all the 63.39 GB content from a key person from Tel Drum was saved”, as well as thousands of invoices, contracts, balance sheets, estimates, proxies, articles of incorporation of ghost companies, statements of account, payment orders. Moreover, the suitcase seems to contain “personal documents of intermediaries”, audit reports, accounting tables, 14,800 photos and videos from the company’s events, documents, selfies, screenshots with talks – most of them from the backup of several phone devices. Also, according to Rise Project, the suitcase contains 54,710 e-mails and attachments from the office e-mail address, as well as an agenda with almost one thousand phone numbers. “The agenda contains 980 phone numbers collected in the recent years: «Basescu», «Hrebe», «Dancila», «Banicioiu», «Pieleanu». One of them is different, being written with a pause between capital letters: «L I V I U»”, reads the message posted by Rise Project. Besides, there are copies in the suitcase of some personal documents of the Dragnea family; Rise Project published a copy of the Baccalaureate Diploma belonging to Dragnea N.L. Valentin Stefan. In November 2017, Liviu Dragnea was indicted in the Tel Drum case, for forming an organized criminal group, for using or presenting in bad faith false, inaccurate or uncomplete documents or statements, as well as for abuse of office and obtaining undue benefits for himself or for another person. According to prosecutors, Liviu Dragnea, in his capacity of the Chairman of the Teleorman County Council, formed an organized criminal group which is acting even today, which consisted and still consists of public servants working in the institutions of the public administration, as well as people in the business sector. The group was initiated in 2001 and its goal was to fraudulently obtain important amounts of money from the contracts funded from public funds, by committing offenses of abuse of office, by defrauding EU funds, by tax evasion, money laundering and using information not intended to be published or by granting access to such information to unauthorized people, the DNA prosecutors claim. The damage caused by abuse of office in this case amounts RON 30 million, and the damage caused by defrauding the EU funds amounts RON 20 million. DNA also announced that the assets of the PSD Chairman Liviu Dragnea were subject to a precautionary seizure and a garnishment, up to the amount of more than RON 127.5 million, in the Tel Drum case. Thus, the DNA prosecutors ordered the precautionary seizure and garnishment up to the amount of RON 127,547,366.34 on all of the PSD Chairman Liviu Dragnea’s movable and immovable assets, stocks and shares he holds in the capital of the private legal persons, on his amounts of money in the bank accounts, as well as on the amount of money owed to him with any title by third parties, including the amounts of money owed as rent. Liviu Dragnea challenged this measure also at the end of the last year, but the court rejected his request. The lawyer of the PSD leader, Maria Vasii, claimed that no institution requested to be introduced as a civil party in this case, and therefore, since no one claimed any damage, the prosecutor wasn’t entitled to order precautionary measures. “We challenged the ordinance by which the precautionary measures were established, since it was issued by the prosecutor by not observing some essential forms required b the law. For instance, the precautionary measure was justified by Mrs. Prosecutor by the need to seize the necessary assets for covering the damages, the prejudice. No one asked to be introduced in the case as civil party, therefore no one claimed any damage until today. The prosecutor is not entitled to establish the seizure ex officio, in the absence of a civil party that claims these damages”, Lawyer Maria Vasii stated. Furthermore, she said that the seizure was established “by ear”, since the PSD Chairman’s assets weren’t evaluated. On January 17, 2018, DNA announced it ordered precautionary measures on all the Tel Drum’s movable and immovable assets, as well as the garnishment on the existing amounts of money or those to be paid by third parties, with ay title, in the bank accounts held by the company, up to the amount of RON 32,118,589.51 (representing the undue benefits and the tax liabilities that should have been paid to the state). On the same date, DNA announced the extension of the criminal prosecution on the company, which is investigated for forming an organized criminal group, for tax evasion in continuous form and for complicity in abuse of office. Reactions to TeleormanLeaks Dragnea, about the suitcase with documents about which Rise Project wrote: It’s a donut, it has nothing to do with me, I ‘m not interested in it On Monday, PSD Chairman Liviu Dragnea came with two suitcases at the PSD Executive Committee (CEx) meeting – saying that one of them was containing “donuts from Rise Project” (e.n. – donut = lie), and the other one was containing “files” about the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDRG)…