National Press Review, February 10

‘The bribe, the customs and the political party’- headlines the Gândul on the front page. 430,000 euros – this is the cost of a leadership position in customs.

Prosecutors for the National Anti-Corruption Directorate claim that the bribe in the file for the Halmeu customs – where 3 people were arrested – has been requested ‘in the name and interest of a political party and the head of an institution.’

In the case of the Halmeu customs, became famous in just a few days, there were five chiefs in two years. In the same newspaper we find a map of bribery in the Romanian customs, as well as a excerpt of a transcript of phone conversations between customs officers, intercepted by investigators.

The phone interceptions made by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate is also approached by the România Liberă, which reproduces the conversation between two customs officials, who had the info from Bucharest that there would be controls and who established, and I quote ‘that for ten days not one cigarette should be allowed across the border’.

Ten days won’t kill anyone. No illicit income for ten days. ‘The customs woman officer was hiding the bribe from her prosecutor husband’ – writes the Adevărul about a chief in the Naidăş customs, whose husband, chief-prosecutor in Oraviţa, forbade her to take bribes.

‘Their villa –with its photograph on the front page of the Adevărul, shows that the wife managed to overcome the husband’s vigilance: their mansion is nothing like a house paid by state clerks.’ - I quoted the newspaper.

The Evenimentul Zilei makes an inventory of the assets that customs officials own in Banat. The chief of the Moraviţa customs, for instance, owns five houses, a transportation company with over 200 cars and a chain of exchange firms. The newspaper also draws the attention on a situation which would be impossible to conceive in any other European country: In 2005, the Moraviţa crossing point was the first institution of this kind to have video surveillance. 13 video cameras have been installed, the images being sent through the Internet, to a computer of the Border Police Inspectorate.

The system worked intermittently since the cameras were facing dead spots, where smuggling of cigarettes and other excise goods could not be observed from. The same newspaper tells us about Radu Mărginean, until yesterday the supreme Head of customs in Romania, and I quote: ‘advanced in the hierarchy of customs under the protection of all governing political parties in the last ten years.

Former subordinate of Vasile Blaga in the Oradea Customs Directorate, Mărginean was appointed chief of the Oradea Bureau during the mandate of former PSD Minister of Finance, Mihai Tănăsescu.

He afterwards held senior positions within the National Customs Authority, during the mandate of Liberal Ministers Sebastian Vlădescu and Varujan Vosganian. In 2009, he was promoted to customs leadership, at the proposal of Gheorghe Pogea (the PNL), through an order signed by Emil Boc ‘ - end of quote.

The Romania Libera announces that, once we introduce the co-payment of health care services, Romanians will have to pay up to 600 lei extra per year for medical consultations. This does not mean that hospital bribes will vanish. Doctors still count on the money in the envelope because they are convinced that their salaries will not increase sufficiently.

‘Fătuloiu caught in flagrant’ – headlines the Jurnalul Naţional, which reminds us of a scandal in the Ministry of Interior last year. Yesterday, at the Bucharest Court of Law, faced with financial documents, the former State Secretary in the Ministry of Interior, Dan Valentin Fătuloiu, admitted in court that his family has owned, since 2002, business with the company led by Cătălin Chelu, the businessman who had been arrested in the famous case of the bribe in the parking lot at the Ministry of Interior. Last year in November, Fătuloiu denounced Chelu that the latter had promised a million euros to solve some issues in several criminal cases.


Translated by: Manuela Stancu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University