Romania's National Council for Attesting University Titles, Diplomas, and Certificates (CNATDCU) determined on Thursday that chief anticorruption prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi hasn’t plagiarized her doctorate thesis.

According to CNATDCU vice-president Mircea Bob, the decision was taken with 35 votes in favor and one abstention, reports local Agerpres.

Controversial Romanian MP Sebastian Ghita, who has been investigated in several corruption cases in recent years, filed a self-denouncement at the General Prosecutors Office on September 27. He claimed that, together with several other state officials, he had been involved in forging the technical expertise report on Laura Codruta Kovesi’s doctorate thesis in 2012.

However, CNATDCU recommended that Kovesi should keep her doctoral thesis, as “withdrawing the title of doctor from the author of the thesis subjected to expertise appears to be an excessive and inappropriate penalty,” said Mircea Bob.

According to CNATDCU, there are some passages in Kovesi’s thesis that could be considered plagiarized material.

“The passages that may fall under the Romanian legal qualification of plagiarism represent about 20 pages out of a total of 444, which represents almost 4% of the thesis. There is a fault in the construction of the thesis’ demonstration, but specific circumstances must be taken into consideration when determining the penalty. In conclusion, this proportion affects a small part of the thesis,” Mircea Bob added.

Some top politicians in Romania have been involved in similar scandals of plagiarism, among them former Prime Minister Victor Ponta and former interior ministers Gabriel Oprea and Petre Toba. Ponta and Oprea lost their doctor titles after CNATDCU ruled that they had copied large parts of their doctorate theses.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com