Magistrates, officials in the Ministry of Justice, and senior officials in the National Penitentiary Administration are on the list of persons who visited the archive of the Justice Ministry’s secret service - SIPA.

Among them is Florin Teodor Andronache, adviser to the former justice minister Robert Cazanciuc. Andronache mentioned that he was an officer of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) in a 2013 wealth declaration, the same year when he visited the archive, reports local News.ro.

Cazanciuc explained yesterday that the committee that visited the SIPA archive in 2013, which included his former adviser Florin Teodor Andronache, went there because it had to change a light bulb in the hallway near the archive.

Justice minister Tudorel Toader published yesterday the list of people who visited the SIPA archive. Other people who visited the archive include Horia Georgescu, who was an adviser to the former justice minister Catalin Predoiu in 2008. Georgescu, who was a member of the SIPA committee, was also the director of the National Integrity Agency (ANI) between 2012 and 2015.

The SIPA archive was also visited by Marius Iosif, former general manager of the National Penitentiary Administration between 2007 and 2008.

SIPA is a secret service that used to operate under the Justice Ministry’s authority and was disbanded in 2006. An article by the controversial journalist Dan Andronic, a man investigated in several corruption cases with many connections to politicians, has sparked the scandal related to SIPA. He wrote that when the service was disbanded in 2006, following a decision of former justice minister Monica Macovei, the people in charge of securing the service’s archives made copies of some sensitive documents.

SIPA’s files included sensitive information about some judges in Romania, information that may have later been used to pressure these judges into ruling convictions in corruption cases. The scandal is aimed at casting new doubts over the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA).

editor@romania-insider.com