Romanian witness protection officers’ “mission”: transporting pigs for Christmas

Prosecutors from the National Anticorruption Department DNA detained several officers of the National Office for Witness Protection (ONPM) earlier this week, including ONPM’s head Adrian Barascu, five chief commissioners, and a psychologist. They’ve allegedly embezzled funds which should have been used in Romania's witness protection program. Moreover, ONMP’s deputy chief and another officer were placed under judicial control in the same case. Between 2014 and November 2015, the criminal group’s members embezzled funds in two ways: on one hand, they overrated the amounts of funds necessary for the protection of witnesses and, on the other hand, they’ve reduced the spending exclusively destined to the witnesses in the program. Moreover, they also registered expenses for fictitious missions, during which they were actually solving personal issues. “The picture was completed with other basic elements: the enforcement of fictitious missions (alleged trips to escort witnesses or to identify homes for them) for the purpose of solving personal problems (the transport of two pigs for winter holidays) or to misuse the funds (fixing service cars with money from the funds dedicated to witness protection, saying that the cars were damaged while escorting witnesses),” reads the prosecutors’ report, cited by local Mediafax. They also purchased products and services that were not meant for the protection of witnesses, but to be used by the institution, such as printers, suppliers, IT equipment for presentations including nine monitors, recorders, clothing items, and surveillance cameras. The investigators also say that Adrian Barascu was reorganizing ONPM as he pleased, dissolving the services led by "undesirable persons" and setting up services led by “obedient persons”. Prosecutors also show that ONPM’s head and his subordinates have put witnesses’ lives in danger many times by organizing oversized escorts with maximum visibility, or by taking them in areas where they were in danger, such as “crowded tourist resorts” in order to offer “holidays” to ONPM officials. The witnesses who dared to challenge ONPM’s practices were persecuted while those “who accepted to be part of establishing apparent protection missions for year-end parties in mountain resorts or for summer holidays in the hot season were favored.” Moreover, according to the report, some of the abuses made by ONPM’s leadership “included teasing the stuff who didn’t agree with the illegal practices of the ONPM’s director (granting the leave for a number of days multiples of 7, inequitable distribution of official duties, granting salary increases based on extraprofessional criteria, and so on).” Head of the Witness Protection Office in Romania arrested for embezzlement. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com