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| Media Headlines 03/03/2011 |
| (2011-03-03) |
| Last updated: 2011-03-04 16:46 EET |
Romanian magistrates on Wednesday ruled in favour of putting a top advisor of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration and a lawyer specialising in financial counselling in temporary arrest, as part of a 2 million euro bribe investigation. The two are faced with allegations of continuous influence peddling and were denounced by an Italian businessman who had himself been indicted for tax evasion in a case which also involves a former state secretary in the Finance Ministry.
This scandal comes soon after the operations carried out on the Romanian border which resulted in hundreds of arrests among customs and border police officers accused of taking bribe. The Romanian daily paper Adevarul writes: “Mafia-style reckoning at top level”, adding that “the informant is the former Italian businessman Antonello Celestini, who was brought to court on charges of tax evasion after the very people he is now accusing of corruption denounced him to the authorities”.
The daily paper argues that in the spring of 2009, Celestini smuggled 900 tons of tobacco into Italy without paying excises and VAT, despite pointed opposition from the National Agency for Fiscal Administration and the Customs National Authority. This was made possible via a signed order from the former Liberal-Democrat Gratiela Iordache, who was a state secretary at the time.
The daily reveals that before calling on Gratiela Iordache, Celestini tried to avoid paying the excises by resorting to the National Agency for Fiscal Administration and the Directorate for Excise and Customs Operations, an institution headed at the time by the man Celistini now accuses of demanding bribe, namely Viorel Comanita, the acting interim manager of the Customs National Authority.
According to the daily paper Jurnalul National, Celestini said “I was clearly told that I wouldn’t be able to do business in Romania any more unless I submitted my contribution. I have filed these incriminatory and self-incriminatory reports because I felt I was being blackmailed by state officials”. The Italian businessman claims that the bribe was originally intended for the head of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration, Sorin Blejnar.
The daily also writes that of late, politicians in the opposition as well as former and current customs employees have repeatedly accused the head of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration of being the key player on the table chess of corrupt practices on the Romanian border, although Blejnar has repeatedly denied all allegations. The Romanian press also tackles the recent case of Cristian Poteras, the mayor of Bucharest District 6 and six of his employees who were brought to court on charges of issuing illegal property documents for land in Bucharest, thus causing 58 million euros worth of losses.
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