Committee to investigate 2009 presidential elections in Romania starts activity

The Parliament’s special inquiry committee, which will investigate how the 2009 presidential elections were organized and held, starts its activity today. It will first hear local journalist Dan Andronic, whose recent statements triggered the whole scandal on the involvement of justice and secret service officials and politicians in the elections from eight years ago, reports local News.ro. The hearings will take place between Monday and Wednesday, said the committee’s president Mihai Fifor, an MP of the Social Democratic Party (PSD). Other important politicians will be called for hearings. These include former PSD leader Mircea Geoana, who lost the presidential race in 2009, former PSD MP Viorel Hrebenciuc, who used to be the party’s “grey eminence” or Ana Maria Patru, the former head of the Permanent Electoral Authority. At the end of April, Romania’s General Prosecutor’s office announced its decision to open an investigation into the 2009 presidential elections. Prosecutors will be investigating possible acts of abuse of office and forging public documents and election data. The General Prosecutor’s office decided to start this investigation after local journalist Dan Andronic, who worked as a campaign consultant to former President Traian Basescu in those elections, said he attended a meeting on elections night at the home of former interior minister Gabriel Oprea. He said that the former director and deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) and Romania’s former General Prosecutor and current chief anticorruption prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi were at that meeting. The Parliament’s committee will thus work in parallel with the General Prosecutor’s office on this issue. editor@romania-insider.com