Senate’s Standing Bureau submitted DNA’s request related to Tariceanu to the Legal Committee. ALDE Chairman: I am eager to study the file. There are only 17,000 pages

The Senate’s Standing Bureau (BP) submitted on Monday to the Legal Committee DNA’s request for starting the criminal prosecution in the case of the Speaker of the higher forum, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, the PSD Senator Claudiu Manda announced. “Today (on Monday – e.n), this request was included in the agenda of the first meeting of the Standing Bureau. The submission letter, the report and the documents are at the Legal Committee. We forwarded it to the Legal Committee. According to the provisions of the Regulation, the members of the Legal Committee must present a calendar and a preliminary report within five days, so we will be able to understand when the Senator will be heard and when a report will be drafted”, Claudiu Manda stated at the end of the meeting of the Standing Bureau. On Thursday, Claudiu Manda stated that the report that came from the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice to the Senate’s leadership “is a submission letter, a report, and there are 73 volumes containing between 200, 300, 150, 199 pages”.   Tariceanu: I am eager to study the file. There are only 17,000 pages   The request for the approval of the criminal prosecution in the case of the Senate’s Speaker Calin Popescu Tariceanu was sent to the Legal Committee; this body has to issue a report within 5 days. On Monday, Tariceanu announced that he is eager to read the file that has 17,000 pages. “Although today the Bureau did nothing else than making a decision regarding the regulatory procedure to be followed. The request was sent to the Legal Committee, which must establish a calendar within 5 days. I am eager for the moment when I will be able to study the file. There are only 17,000 pages, so a lot of files, therefore I am asking you not to ask me things on which I cannot answer”, Calin Popescu Tariceanu stated. On Thursday, the Anti-corruption National Directorate (DNA) announced that the Senate’s Speaker Calin Popescu Tariceanu is accused of receiving almost USD 800,000 from the representatives of an Austrian company in order for them to conclude several addenda to a commercial agreement, the money being used for the electoral campaign. “The prosecutors are conducting an investigation related to suspicions on committing corruption deeds for covering certain electoral campaign expenses with amounts of money from a company which is suspected to have obtained important commercial agreements with the Romanian state. The file was made in 2018, as a result of unifying three criminal cases, of which one was took by the DNA prosecutors upon the Austrian judicial authorities’ request. Specifically, a dignitary is suspected to have received, indirectly, during the period 2007-2008, material benefits amounting around USD 800,000 from the representatives of an Austrian company, in exchange for the efforts made by him in the exercise of his position, so that a number of addenda to a commercial agreement run by the company will be concluded. The amount allegedly represents a fee of 10% of the value of these addenda and was used for the benefit of the dignitary, being transferred according to some fictitious agreements concluded with several offshore companies”, the DNA prosecutors stated in an answer for MEDIAFAX. According to the quoted source, the investigation in this case is also related to other persons for complicity in bribery; as for the dignitary, who currently is a senator, the criminal prosecution for taking bribe is conditioned by the approval of the Senate. The company in question is Fujitsu Siemens Computers, the name of which was also related to the Microsoft case, in which several Romanian dignitaries have been involved. “In this respect, the Chief-Prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate sent to the General Prosecutor of P.I.C.C.J. the required documents to notify the Senate, which is going to decide on this. The approval requested for the senator in this criminal case is needed in order to fully conduct the criminal prosecution and to give him the possibility to prepare his defense within a legal procedural framework”, DNA also added. In 2014, Fujitsu Siemens GmbH Austria made a denouncement on offenses committed by the Romanian employees related to the Microsoft License Agreement since 2004 concluded with the Romanian Government and to its execution. Fujitsu Siemens Computers was also involved in other criminal cases related to renting Microsoft licenses. In 2016, prosecutors accused the former head of the Secretary General of the Government Eugen Bejinariu of abuse of office for initiating and supporting to draft Government’s Decisions on the approval of the conclusion of a license agreement between the Romanian Government and Fujitsu Siemens Computers GmbH, of a commercial license rental agreement regarding Microsoft products. At that time, it was falsely invoked that Fujitsu Siemens Computers was the sole distributor of these products.

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