THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION IN ROMANIA: PASSING

C O N F I D E N T I A L BUCHAREST 001600

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE DEPT FOR EUR/NCE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/17/2016
TAGS: PGOV KCOR KJUS RO
SUBJECT: THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION IN ROMANIA: PASSING
MARKS FOR CURRENT EFFORTS, BUT MORE EFFORT NEEDED IN THE
LONG HAUL

REF: BUCHAREST 1433

Classified By: DCM MARK TAPLIN FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) & (D)


1. (C) Summary: There is some good news in Bucharest these
days in the fight against corruption, a longstanding Romanian
vice. There is something of a consensus that ongoing
anti-corruption efforts are positively impacting both
Romanian political life and society. Corruption remains
rampant in every sector, but the parade of dignitaries before
anticorruption prosecutors, magnified by a media eager to
document every twist in such high-visibility cases, is
sending a message that high-level corruption cannot be
practiced with the same insouciance and impunity. Still,
despite the European Commission's public pronouncements
citing improvements, EU officials in Bucharest are among the
first to discount privately any profound change of Romanian
attitudes toward corruption. While prosecutors have been
active in obtaining indictments against corrupt individuals,
the judiciary continues to be a weak link. Romanians working
to rein in corruption also concur that the changes they have
made, though significant, may not be lasting. They cite the
lack of political will to seriously fight corruption as
evidenced by parliamentarians' attitudes toward the last
major piece of EU-endorsed anti-corruption legislation
establishing a National Integrity Agency. In a reprise of
parliament's refusal last February to confirm as law an
emergency ordinance establishing the National Anticorruption
Directorate, parliamentarians -- even within the ruling
coalition -- have delayed and watered down a law establishing
a National Integrity Agency to monitor officials' wealth
while in office. EU officials admit that their
post-accession monitoring efforts will be focused on
EU-funded projects, not on the corruption issue as a whole.
Continued joint EU and US pressure may also be needed to
prevent back-sliding after January 1. End summary.


2. (C) Corruption still pervades many levels of Romanian
society. Anecdotal evidence is commonplace: A hospital stay
requires bribes to assure proper medical treatment, even
minimum levels of service. Teaching posts can be bought and
sold, since teachers and professors are in a position to
generate income from students who will pay not just for a
final grade, but in some instances even for each passing test
result. Recently repaved roads quickly fall into disrepair
because officials have little interest in questioning the
quality of the work of their friends who provided them with
kickbacks. Local mayors and prefects still openly demand
bribes, as evidenced in the recent arrest of the young and
notionally reformist Liberal Party prefect of Iasi. A U.S.
aerospace contractor recently reported that he was hit up for
a political donation by the (now-suspended) Defense Minister.
Many parliamentarians and state officials live in expensive
villas despite their many years in public service earning
what are on paper modest incomes.


3. (C) The European Commission's September 26 Monitoring
Report on the state of preparedness for EU membership of
Romania (and Bulgaria) highlighted "tangible progress" in
establishing sound structures and launching a number of
investigations into high-level corruption cases. It gave a
green light to EU entry for Romania, but added a number of
benchmarks required of Romania including, inter alia:
creation of an integrity agency to verify asset declarations
of politicians and civil servants; continued professional,
non-partisan investigations into allegations of high-level
corruption; and unspecified "further measures" to prevent and
fight against corruption, especially within the local
government. Privately, however, our contacts remain less
than sanguine about the anti-corruption effort. European
Commission Delegation political counselor Onno Simons told
Poloff that he considers Romania's political class to be
"thoroughly corrupted" and only willing to build a faade of
anti-corruption efforts for the sake of getting into the
European Union. He asserted that once Romania was accepted
into the EU, there would be no effective mechanism that the
EU could put in place to further Romania's progress on
important issues like anti-corruption and judicial reform.
The EU, he argued, would have to deal with Romania exactly as
it does with other EU members, "based on trust." He, like
other EC delegation officials, questioned Romania's ability
to absorb EU funding, citing the Bucharest City
administration as an example of an institution where
officials have preferred not to take advantage of EU funds,
lest they have to develop more transparent practices of
handling funds and contracts. British DCM Iain Lindsay also
privately noted that some Romanian politicians he had thought
were "on the good side" turned out to be "thoroughly


corrupt." He cited the way political parties were delaying
and watering down the draft law on the National Integrity
Agency as evidence that most politicians did not want any
type of effective accountability that could identify their
illegitimate incomes.

Part Firm Foundation, Part Flimsy Facade
--------------


4. (C) In order to enter NATO and now the EU, Romanians have
had to acknowledge that corruption is a pervasive problem and
to take actions to rein in the most egregious examples.
Doing so unleashed a wave of popular indignation against
corruption in Romanian politics that decisively tipped the
2004 parliamentary and presidential elections in favor of
Traian Basescu and the current ruling coalition, which ran on
an anti-corruption platform. The current government can
boast some major successes. Minister of Justice Monica
Macovei has earned renown for her efforts to reform the
judicial system and to ensure anticorruption prosecutors in
the National Anticorruption Directorate were empowered,
independent, and equipped to investigate high-level
corruption. Other Ministers have also established
anticorruption departments focused on preventing and policing
corruption within their own ranks. Most noteworthy is the
Ministry of Administration and Interior's Anticorruption
Directorate, led by General Director Marian Sintion, which
attempts to police the police and has established a hotline
for citizens' complaints. Investigators have already used
these tips to catch officials accepting bribes. The Ministry
of Defense is the latest to establish its own anticorruption
department. Its first case (reftel) brought down the Chief
of the General Staff, Gen. Eugen Badalan, among others.
(note: The Badalan case, however, underscored that fighting
corruption likely remains highly politicized. The
investigation of the pro-Basescu former Chief of Staff was
reportedly launched at the instigation of Prime Minister
Tariceanu and his ally, suspended Defense Minister Atanasiu.
While prosecutors uphold the investigation's merits, it is
evident in this case that justice is not blind, but
targeted.)


5. (C) The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA),led by
Chief Prosecutor Daniel Morar, has launched a series of
investigations on high level politicians over the past year.
These investigations have been unprecedented in publicly
naming previous political "untouchables" as suspects,
including former Prime Minister and then-President of the
Chamber of Deputies Adrian Nastase, then-Vice Prime Minister
George Copos, Chief of the General Staff Eugen Badalan,
Constanta Mayor Radu Mazare, former Privatization Minister
Ovidiu Musetescu, Economic Ministry State Secretary Ionel
Mantog, Liberal Party (and Social Democratic Party) financier
Dinu Patriciu, Senator Serban Mihailescu, Vrancea County
Council President Marian Oprisan, and Iasi County Prefect
Radu Prisacaru. Technical equipment and assistance from
Embassy's Resident Legal Advisor have been central to many of
DNA's recent successful investigations.


6. (C) The highly publicized investigations have even begun
to affect some prominent political careers, with political
parties reacting to a select few corruption investigations
with their own sanctions, but usually only when the parties'
leaderships see a clear-cut downside from inaction, or
political advantages from acting against corrupt party
officials. While the DNA has concluded almost a dozen of
these high-level investigations and sent them to court, it
remains to be seen whether the courts can administer justice
in a timely and uncorrupted manner. The Minister of Justice
has publicly regretted that Romanian judges were made
independent before being made accountable, and the public
generally believes many magistrates themselves to be highly
corrupt. According to the EC Delegation's Progress Report of
September 20, the courts have rendered final convictions
against some 20 defendants, but most of them have been small
fry, including one lawyer, six police officers, and one
customs employee. Only one former Member of Parliament,
Social Democrat Deputy Gabriel Bivolaru, has been convicted
of fraud and is currently serving time in jail.


7. (C) Despite the lack of convincing examples that corrupt
senior officials will eventually be convicted, there is a
general view that anti-corruption efforts are positively
impacting Romanian society. Corruption remains rampant in
every sector, but the parade of dignitaries before
anticorruption prosecutors magnified by a press eager to
document the tiniest twist in high-level cases is sending a
message that high level corruption can no longer be engaged


in with impunity. Control bodies within institutions are
beginning to monitor the use of public and EU funds. A 16
percent flat tax on incomes has also brought many Romanians
out of the grey market as they declare their actual incomes
rather than evade taxes. The government has also succeeded
in passing transparency laws on the use of public funds,
eliminating the practice of rescheduling/exempting debt
payments to the state, eliminating the immunity of ministers,
and reinforcing criminal sanctions for tax evasion. Like it
or not--and it is evident that many politicians do
not--anticorruption has become an inescapable theme in
Romanian political life.


8. (C) This mixed report card on corruption is also
reflected in the polls. A government-conducted survey from
July 2006 indicated that some 48 percent of respondents felt
that corruption under the current government was the same as
with the previous PSD-led government; 24 percent felt
corruption had increased; only 15 percent saw progress in
reducing corruption. The public viewed parliamentarians as
the most corrupt (69 percent),followed by bureaucrats and
government officials (58 percent); ministerial-level
appointees (57 percent); policemen (57 percent); judges (50
percent); doctors (49 percent); and prosecutors (48 percent).
Some ruling-party contacts have tried to spin the results by
claiming that the government's willingness to release this
polling data is a sign of new openness and maturity about the
subject and that the public's evident dissatisfaction with
corruption is a positive sign of greater public awareness of
the issue.

The Way Forward on Corruption Might Slide Backwards
-------------- --------------


9. (C) Despite the European Commission's cautiously
affirmative report card on Romania's progress in addressing
corruption, Romanian politicians may be tempted to resume
their old ways once they are secure that nobody is looking
over their shoulders. In February, the Senate, including the
ruling coalition, attempted to revoke the DNA's authority to
investigate parliamentarians. It was only concerted EU,
U.S., and public pressure that convinced the parliament to
reconsider. Similarly, in September, the ruling coalition's
Hungarian (UDMR) and Conservative (PC) parties, along with
the opposition Social Democrats, rewrote the MOJ-sponsored
draft law establishing the National Integrity Agency (ANI) to
remove the power to audit officials' asset declarations by
accessing banking and real estate data. EU officials quickly
and publicly reprimanded the heads of the Hungarian and
Conservative parties for their parties' stances against this
final piece of EU-endorsed anticorruption legislation.
Minister of Justice Macovei subsequently threatened to resign
over these revisions that would have effectively prevented
the ANI from verifying officials' declarations of assets.
Prime Minister Tariceanu in reply merely encouraged
parliament not to do anything hastily that could result in
any last-minute negative statements in the September 26 EU
monitoring report.


10. (C) Despite joint PNL/PD public support for the National
Integrity Agency, even PNL party members are not actively
seeking passage of a strongly-empowered ANI. In a meeting
with PolCouns, top Liberal Party official and Tariceanu
confidant Christian David evinced skepticism about the
National Integrity Agency as a tool against corruption. He
acknowledged that every party accepted the need for such an
agency, and predicted that it would eventually be approved by
parliament, if only to meet EU expectations. However, he
argued that that the agency as proposed by the MOJ risked the
danger of "over-empowering" prosecutors in the fight against
corruption, and said that the law needed to ensure that
individuals were protected from personal vendettas or
politically-motivated prosecution. He also expressed
frustration with the EU position on the corruption issue,
noting that there were "no real EU benchmarks" or plans to
fight corruption and describing the EU's position towards
Romania as "prejudice," since the EU was, in his view,
applying standards for conduct not applied to previous
aspirants or founding members such as Italy. For his part,
opposition PSD president Mircea Geoana insisted Social
Democrats were committed to fighting corruption but explained
his party was opposed to the ANI because of the
"non-consultative" approach taken by the MOJ.


11. (C) Comment: By all rights, the crowning jewel of the
EU's campaign to impose anti-corruption measures on Romania
should have been the creation of a National Integrity Agency
to monitor the income of politicians and civil servants. Its


fate remains in the balance. However, even if a
fully-empowered National Integrity Agency is created as a
result of EU (and USG) pressure, it cannot do much itself to
stymie the broad sweep of corrupt habits among business
people, doctors, and petty officials. Nor can it directly
address an issue highlighted by Justice Minister
Macovei--that of making judges more accountable. The
corruption probe of CHOD General Badalan also underscores
that corruption investigations--just like the parallel issue
of lustration of public figures with ties to the
Securitate--is a highly politicized process that is as much
about settling scores as it is promoting justice and
transparency. Still, the past two years have had their share
of anti-corruption successes as well. The proposed National
Integrity Agency remains an important piece of the
anti-corruption puzzle, as it would force Romanian officials
to be accountable by making asset and interest declarations
open to official scrutiny and audit. Without firm U.S. and
EU pressure, however, it is unlikely to be passed in any
effective form. Both the U.S. and the EU will need to
continue to work together after Romania's January 1 EU
accession to promote transparency in Romanian government,
accountability among Romanian officials, and an abiding
commitment among everyday Romanians to expect more, not less,
from their public servants and fellow citizens. End Comment.

Taubman