Former Romanian mayor sentenced to 8 years in prison in illegal land retrocession case

Bucharest Court of Appeal sentenced Cristian Poteras, former mayor of Bucharest’s District 6, to 8 years in jail without parole. The decision is final, reports local Mediafax. Poteras was investigated for abuse of office in a case related to illegal retrocession of lands in Romania’s capital. Six other public clerks got jail sentences in the same case, namely Gheorghe Florica, Petre Boncea, Dumitru Vultur, Daniel Moise, Cristina Popescu and Dorina Piftor. Initially, the District 6 court acquitted Poteras in this case but prosecutors appealed the sentence and the trial was moved to the Bucharest Court of Appeal. Anticorruption prosecutors sent Cristian Poteras to trial in March 2011 for abuse of office. He was the mayor of Bucharest’s District 6 at that time. Poteras, together with the other public clerks, released in 2006 six land ownership titles, without respecting legal provisions. They released the titles for over 119,000 smq of land in Bucharest with a market value of some EUR 58 million at that time. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com