The major deadlock in which the Dumitru Buzatu case finds itself is nothing but the predictable outcome of a journey full of errors and, in general, of the serious degradation of the DNA during Marius Voineag’s mandate.
At the end of last week, the news emerged that the Court of Appeal in Iasi decided to remove all wiretaps from the file, as well as a witness statement from the case of the PSD baron accused of bribery. The reason, according to the information so far, is the lack of a special warrant for the recordings made by DNA collaborators.
Of course, the flagrancy remains, but the recordings were essential to prove that Dumitru Buzatu did not receive the money as a loan, as he claims, but as a bribe, as the whistleblower alleges. A bribe for Buzatu to settle unperformed works from European funds based on false documents.
And here lies, in fact, the biggest problem of this case, which would have probably brought it down if it weren't for the wiretaps made without a special warrant.
Why is Marius Voineag complaining?
A few months after the spectacular opening of the case, the head of DNA started complaining everywhere that Laura Codruta Kovesi wants to take him to EPPO to campaign against him in the presidential elections.
Voineag's complaining desperation was so great that it deserved a bit of verification. And a brief investigation quickly revealed that the case was indeed under the competence of EPPO, because the bribe was given for defrauding European funds with a damage of 12 million euros.
DNA pretended not to see the fraud, which it completely ignored, and went only after the bribe. Possibly because at the top of PSD, the dinosaur from Vaslui had become a vulnerability and needed to be taken down. We remember that less than 24 hours after the flagrancy, Ciolacu convened the National Political Bureau on Saturday morning and excluded Buzatu from everywhere.
Sure, DNA can defend itself by claiming tactical action, granting immunity to the whistleblower to catch Buzatu. But immunity for falsifications and a fraud of 12 million euros is hard to sustain.
Knowing that trouble was brewing and competence was in the air, Voineag preconstituted his defense in case the case exploded – LCK is to blame because she has presidential ambitions.
The defense had no interest in invoking EPPO's competence, more challenging than DNA, and instead nitpicked the case on procedural errors.
However, it seems that the expert who should have authorized the unfinished work reported to EPPO for fraud in European funds, and the European prosecutor also opened a case for what DNA pretended not to see.
The disaster of the Voineag era
Since the savior of Mr. Nicolae Ciucă, Marius Voineag, became the head of DNA, through the removal of the overly rigid and hard-to-manipulate Crin Bologa, the anti-corruption prosecutor's office is in an unprecedented decline.
His main concern has been the shelving of cases. Cases have been shelved en masse, as was the case with the SRI acquisitions for which the head of the military service was removed from DNA. And the BMW acquisitions case. And the ASF case. The list is very long.
The newly opened cases are very thin and plagued by procedural flaws. The biggest case of this year was supposed to be the one involving the SRI generals, started vigorously with all TV screens yellowed and at least one of them being kept updated in real-time with every move.
- Exclusive Connection between the prosecutor proposed by Predoiu for the DNA leadership and the blocking of the analysis of Nicolae Ciucă's plagiarism (document)
What happened in the case in almost six months? Nothing, except that Judge Jderu was promptly and extremely dubiously replaced during the hearing for the extension of judicial control, after ordering that the accused be allowed to see the contents of the case, which she surprisingly found out was being kept secret from them by the prosecutor (former SIIJ) Iorga Moraru, who became the head of Section I in DNA, despite the negative opinion of CSM.
We also have the case with ribbons Nelu Tataru. It is certainly immoral, downright disgusting, for a person earning thousands of euros per month to have joys at a hundred lei, a chicken, or some eggs from a poor person.
But to invest the work of 4 undercover investigators and hours of searches in such a case is ridiculous for a prosecutor's office designed to combat major corruption, not trivial matters.
But DNA has become the prosecutor's office of trivial matters, settling scores, and whitewashing through discreet shelving, deactivated by confident leaders.