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| Sentences for Corruption |
| (2013-04-23) |
| Last updated: 2013-04-24 13:12 EET |
After 3 years of trials, the main characters in what the Romanian media dubbed the “Voicu octopus” saga, after the name of the politician who managed a corrupt system of relations and connections, received their sentences.
The former Social Democrat senator in the Romanian Parliament, Catalin Voicu, is the epitome of pervasive corruption, as he created a vast, corrupt network of policemen, judges, politicians and businessmen, through which he tried to influence court rulings in his own interest. That was the reason why the anticorruption prosecutor who dealt with one of the most resounding cases of corruption of the past years in Romania asked for an enhanced sentence for the former senator.
Found guilty of influence peddling, senator Voicu was sentenced to 7 years in prison by the High Court of Cassation and Justice. In the same file, the High Court sentenced a businessman to 4-year imprisonment while another businessman and a former magistrate, who had actually been the president of the civil department of the High Court, received suspended 4-year sentences.
From the former businessman Catalin Voicu had asked money to intercede with the police in his favor, in a criminal file that involved him. The latter businessman, famous for his contracts with the state, is supposed to have given Voicu almost 260 thousand euros to obtain a postponement of his hearing deadline at the High Court. Here comes in the former magistrate Florin Costiniu, who had the mission to influence his colleagues in the panel so as to find a favorable solution to a ‘request from the political environment’.
The facts- influence peddling, accessory to influence peddling, forgery – as well as the characters involved account for the name the media has given to that case of corruption, namely the “Voicu octopus’ saga. Actually the issue made headlines 3 years ago and it all started with the stenographs published by the press following the tapping of senator Voicu’s phone conversations with the potential beneficiaries of his services.
In one of the recordings Voicu said that shortly after the fall of Communism, in December 1989, he was an aide to the Prosecutor General, a position that allowed him to create his network of connections. Voicu himself confessed his modus operandi: he got hold of documents incriminating the people he later blackmailed into faithfulness.
In another stenograph he said his clients had never gone to prison and the worst-case scenario for them was a suspended sentence. In one of the recordings, in his megalomania, Voicu even talked about the likelihood of becoming the country’s interior minister, in which case he could control the whole judiciary.
The former senator Catalin Voicu is actually the epitome of an entire class of corrupt and unethical politicians, businessmen, judges and policemen Romania has had to put up with for the past 20 years.
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