[ 2014-01-07 ]

Former Romanian prime minister jailed for taking bribes
Romania’s former prime minister, Adrian Nastase,
was jailed for a second time on Monday after a
court sentenced him to four years for taking
bribes, in a move the country is likely to present
as further evidence it is getting tough on
corruption.

Nastase, 63, one of the big figures of Romania’s
post-communist politics, will return to jail just
months after he was released having served nine
months of a previous two-year sentence for
corruption in 2012.

He made a failed suicide attempt after his
previous sentencing, shooting himself in the neck
at his luxury villa in Bucharest. He was shown on
national television being rushed to hospital in an
ambulance.

Nastase, social democrat premier from 2000 to
2004, this time surrendered himself to a Bucharest
police station on Monday evening, accompanied by
his son. The former premier has repeatedly denied
wrongdoing and was reported as saying his latest
sentencing was “utterly unfair”.

Victor Ponta, Romania’s present social democrat
premier and a former protégé of Nastase,
insisted Nastase was a “political convict” who
had been a target for his rival, Romanian
president Traian Basescu. Nastase had hoped to
make a political comeback in elections this year.

But monitoring groups hailed the 2012 jailing of
Nastase, the most senior politician in Romania to
be convicted of corruption since communism fell,
as a sign the country’s judiciary was becoming
more effective at tackling endemic graft
problems.

Romania, one of the EU’s two poorest member
states, has been subject to special monitoring by
Brussels since joining the EU in 2007, and has
come under heavy pressure to step up action
against corruption.

Nastase was sentenced on Monday by Romania’s
High Court of Cassation and Justice to four years
for receiving €630,000-worth of bribes. He was
accused of taking gifts from a senior inspector at
a state construction watchdog for helping her to
get the job.

With his wife, Dana, he was also accused of
ordering officials to circumvent customs
regulations to bring building materials into the
country to furnish his house in Bucharest and a
holiday retreat. His wife was given a three-year
suspended sentence as an accomplice.

The five-judge panel simultaneously sentenced
Nastase to three years for blackmail of a former
Romanian consul in Shanghai, with the sentences
running concurrently. He was barred from running
for political office for five years after his
release.

Nastase was sentenced in 2012 for illegally
raising campaign financing.

Source - FT

... go Back