Tariceanu after hearing by Judiciary Committee: Senate’s Speaker says DNA’s attempt to start a criminal prosecution against him is aimed at intimidating him and announces he will not quit the “fight” for a “fair justice”

Senate’s Speaker says DNA’s attempt to start a criminal prosecution against him is aimed at intimidating him and announces he will not quit the “fight” for a “fair justice” Senate’s Speaker Calin Popescu stated on Tuesday, after he was heard by the Legal Committee preceding the opinion on the criminal prosecution, requested by the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) in his case, that the prosecutors’ attempt “has a well-defined purpose, namely to intimidate me”. Tariceanu added that he will not quit his “fight” for a “fair justice”. “This so-called action of the prosecutors, materialized in a report sent to the Parliament, for alleged corruption deeds, has a well-defined purpose, namely to intimidate me and those who want to follow me in this fight we started four years ago, in order to warn about the excesses and the serious abuses that took place in Romania, in the Romanian judiciary. This action is also aimed at amplifying the confusion that rules today in the society, among the citizens, who can hardly distinguish what is right, what is good, from what is evil. Of course this action has a perverse effect. Undoubtedly, because it seeds distrust in institutions, and this is the most serious thing”, Calin Popescu Tariceanu stated. In this context, the Senate’s Speaker added he will not be “intimidated” by this action. “Such things do not intimidate me, I don’t quit the fight that I started and which I will carry on for a fair justice, which must be based on the law and only on the law. I don’t quit the fight that I started. (…)  I will continue the efforts I made together with my colleagues in order to reform justice. The laws on the organization of the judiciary must be finalized, the required correction must be made, including regarding the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, so that justice or the prosecutors’ action will no longer be allowed to be discretionary, restricting or affecting by a profound manner the Romanian citizens’ rights. In the end, we must put a natural question to ourselves: is it normal for the state to pay for these serious mistakes committed in Romania in the judiciary field, because you know very well there are numerous citizens who, in the end, found their justice at ECHR. But no one is held accountable for this, of those working in judiciary, and the interesting thing is that the Romanian state is the one who has to pay the damages”, the Senate’s Speaker added. The ALDE Chair also said that the vote to be expressed by the Parliament on the criminal prosecution in his case is not a vote regarding his person, “it is rather a vote that will demonstrate, in the end, that the law is the one that has to protect all the Romanians and each of them against abuses, the law is the one that has to protect their rights and freedoms, and everyone has the right to benefit from the appropriate respect, to receive the appropriate respect and the belief that he is protected by the law”. Tariceanu added that he explained to his colleagues in the Parliament that the Government’s decisions invoked in the criminal investigation “did nothing else but making the Romanian institutions be legal, including those directly belonging to the Government, since Windows licenses were used without existing any payment for this”, and these decisions are “fully legal”, and none of them was related to the payment of an amount of money to Microsoft.   “They raise the following question: these decisions were allegedly issued to favor the Microsoft company. I explained to you from the beginning that the Government complied with the law by issuing these Government’s decisions. Furthermore the Government didn’t perform any payment that could cause the suspicion that I obtained undue benefits indirectly, and if these decisions were unlawful, they could have been challenged before the administrative courts, or annulled by the following Government. Well, they weren’t annulled, on the contrary, the Government assumed the obligations to be performed”, Tariceanu explained. Senate’s Speaker Calin Popescu Tariceanu was heard on Tuesday by the Legal Committee as a result of DNA’s request to approve starting the criminal prosecution in his case. On November 7, DNA sent to the Senate the request to approve starting the criminal prosecution in Tariceanu’s case, the latter appreciating that this is a political action and expressing his belief that the file contains “a lot of wastepaper”. Calin Popescu Tariceanu is accused of having received, when he was PM, “material benefits” of almost USD 800,000 from an Austrian company, in order to intervene for the conclusion of certain addenda to a contract executed by the company. The amount received by Tariceanu represented a 10% fee from the value of these addenda and was allegedly used for the benefit of the dignitary, being transferred based on some fictitious agreements concluded with several offshore companies. Calin Popescu Tariceanu’s file has more than 70 volumes and contains over 17,000 pages. According to the Senate’s Regulation, the Legal Committee has to issue a report, which is subject to the approval of the majority of the present members, by secret vote, then it is debated by the Senate’s plenary session no later than within 5 days since it was submitted to the Standing Bureau. The resolution on the criminal prosecution request, whose draft is prepared by the Committee for Legal Matters, Appointments, Discipline, Immunities and Validations, has to be adopted with the vote of the majority of the present senators, by observing Art.67 of the Romanian Constitution, republished. The vote is secret and expressed by balls. The resolution by which the Senate requests or does not request the criminal prosecution has to be published in the Official Journal. Of the 11 members of the Senate’s Legal Committee, five members are from PSD, two of them are from PNL, and one member is from USR, UDMR and ALDE. Senator Adrian Tutuianu, who is one of the members of the Committee,...

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