After seven-year trial, court rules former Romanian Justice Minister was a Secret Police informant

A former Justice Minister in Romania was found to have collaborated with the Secret Police during the Communist period. The decision that former minister Rodica Stanoiu was an informant with the Secret Police the Securitate came after a seven-year long trial, and cannot be further appealed. Romania's National Council to Study the Securitate Archives CNSAS was also involved in this trial, as it issued a document in 2006 confirming the former minister was in fact a Securitate informant. Stanoiu appealed the document in court, but lost. The recent decision from the High Court of Cassation and Justice keeps he decision issued by a previous court, which also decided Stanoiu had to pay trail expenses of some EUR 4,800 to the CNSAS. Stanoiu, a Justice Minister between 2000 and 2004, however said the 1,600 – page file found by CNSAS, nicknamed 'Sanda', was in fact a monitoring file between 1978 and 1982. She said the informant file on her name was fabricated in 2003-2004, at the request of a vice-president of a secret service at the time. She said other alleged Securitate informant files were altered during the same period. Stanoiu, now 74, denied having given any of the 18 informative statements under her name, and said these were fakes, copying her handwriting after the fall of Communism. “There was a period in my life when I had a different handwriting, because I had spine surgery. These documents attributed to me copy that handwriting,” she said. The former Minister also argues that she could have never made that many grammar mistakes like the ones found in the informant notes attributed to her. She also appealed the graphology tests which revealed her handwriting was the same as the one on the informant notes, saying the experts who had done the tests were of 'arguable reputation'. But she refused to openly answer to whether she was a secret police informant or not: “I have the right not to speak. You cannot make me declare anything,” she said. The Securitate was Romania's Secret Police between 1948 and 1989. Besides working with its official employees, the Securitatea was also collaborating with individuals turned informants, who had different code names, and who were offering information about colleagues, neighbors, and sometimes even family members who opposed the regime. This Secret Police was in charge of imprisoning those who stood against the regime, and in order to get information, its agents were frequently using different methods of torture. Most of the Securitate archives were handed over to the CNSAS, which was created for the purpose of studying them, in order to reveal names of informants, on the one hand, and allow Romanians access to their monitoring files, on the other. Any Romanian citizen or any foreigner with Romanian citizenship after 1945 can submit a request to see their own Securitate file, in case they were being monitored by the Secret Police. editor@romania-insider.com