Tag: Sebastian Ghita

The first of these broke last summer when an audio recording emerged in which Kovesi could be heard instructing her subordinates to pursue investigations against the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues in order to “put pressure” on the government in retaliation for their efforts to limit her authority. According to the witness – another former MP – prosecutors threatened to target his family unless he co-operated and claimed that they were acting with the approval of their superiors, including Kovesi. Among other things, this has revealed the existence of 65 secret protocols linking the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) with the DNA and a wide range of other law enforcement, judicial and administrative agencies. There is, for example, a very obvious conflict of interests in the fact that one of these protocols is with the Superior Council of Magistracy (CSM), the body responsible for regulating the activities of judges and prosecutors. According to SRI whistle-blower, Daniel Dragomir, the DNA has a confidential agreement with the ANCPI, the public land registry and real estate agency, giving prosecutors direct access to its database. Most troubling of all for a country that experienced the brutality of the Securitate, the communist era secret police, are revelations detailing the close and secretive relationship between the DNA and the SRI, and the role they jointly play in manipulating the criminal justice system through covert and extra-constitutional means. Under the Romanian constitution, the involvement of intelligence officers in such activity is categorically unlawful. Longstanding calls by the Romanian Union of Judges for an investigation into allegations that the SRI has maintained the old Securitate practice of planting penetration agents in the judiciary have been repeatedly ignored. The reforms needed to address these problems in a way that strengthens rather than weakens the fight against corruption are unlikely to be agreed in the current atmosphere of partisanship and mistrust. Nor can Romania expect much in the way of wise counsel from its international partners.