The declassification by interim president Ilie Bolojan of the expenses for Klaus Iohannis’ foreign trips during his 10-year term is a sanitary act. It’s an act of transparency, legality, and cleansing of an impudence that surpasses all imagination.
In short, in those 10 years, Mr. Iohannis spent over 113 million lei on his trips, which is almost 23 million euros.
If in the first term the average was about one million euros per year, in the second term, especially after the pandemic, the costs exploded:
- 2021 – 16 visits - 7,039,007 lei
- 2022 – 20 visits - 13,719,191 lei
- 2023 – 26 visits - 36,459,563 lei
- 2024 – 22 visits - 20,899,997 lei
These amounts include the rental and operation of luxury planes. There were only special regime flights, none regular, but also the extreme extravagance of aerial Uber stops in Sibiu, to pick up and drop off his consort.
And to the final value of the trips, the cost of accommodations in the most expensive hotels must be added, as well as the rest of the imperial-level protocol.
Nothing justifies such extravagance with public money. You can go to Brussels with a 1,000 euro ticket, you don't need to spend almost 150,000 euros, which was the cost of the former president's last trip.
Perhaps if Romania had a brilliant foreign policy, if Mr. Iohannis had the stature of a Plenković or a Sikorski, maybe these sums wouldn't be so outrageous. But the results obtained by Klaus Iohannis at the cost of these exorbitant expenses have been mediocre.
He couldn't have been any different, in fact. If he had been a great politician, a great official, he would have known how to control his parvenu impulses, aware that they do harm and cause harm. Do you think they didn't play a role in rejecting Mr. Iohannis in all attempts to occupy foreign offices?
Mr. Iohannis spent 3.5 million lei on Hakuna Matata and on a Safari in Kenya. 7.5 million lei to be received by the vice mayor of Rio de Janeiro. 7 million lei for the tour in Japan and Singapore. Even a one-day visit to Sofia cost 50,000 euros.
Mr. Iohannis never took business delegations with him. Any ministers in the delegation came separately, on a regular flight, not on the pharaoh's plane.
He never accounted for the results of the trips, except for some wooden and irrelevant press releases.
And it's not just about the external balance. Romania's tragic situation, the rise of extremists are direct consequences of Iohannis' terms, of the disappointment and frustration caused to people, including through opulent luxury and the secrecy of expenses behind which people suspected exorbitant amounts.
It's no wonder he felt the need to keep this mess secret. And the fact that President Bolojan declassified the documents without issues shows that Iohannis shamelessly lied when he claimed he couldn't provide the data because it would violate the law.
What Mr. Iohannis probably hoped, not necessarily without reason, was that he would be succeeded by a president who would take advantage of the opacity custom and keep the secret to benefit from it for their own comfort. Luxury jets are dear to Marcel Ciolacu.
He had the misfortune, a true nightmare, to be succeeded by Ilie Bolojan, completely alien to such behaviors and extremely conscious of the imperative of saving the presidency's image and its relationship with the citizens.
But Mr. Iohannis is not the only one guilty of this boundless disgrace. He is the profiteer, of course, but he shares the blame with the army of lackeys who didn't dare to oppose.
Yes, there was also a lot of terror instilled by Klaus Iohannis. Ilie Bolojan recounted on Europa FM how in the early days after taking office, whenever he entered a room, people jumped as if burned off their chairs.
But even this terror was gradually instilled, most of those in the presidential administration and in politics, in general, did not oppose, out of stupidity, convenience, wickedness, or cowardice.
On all the documents of these trips with obscene costs, there are a series of signatures, of people who validated them. They should be criminally investigated for abuse of office.
The money will not be recovered. But the signal must be unequivocal. Those who endorse the theft of public funds, even that of the president, must think twice and be aware that they assume the risk of going to jail.