The mayor of Deva, Mircia Muntean, was sentenced to six years in prison, no parole, for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) and causing an accident in 2014, reports local Digi24.

The High Court’s decision is final and Muntean was incarcerated yesterday.

He was the mayor of Deva, a city in Western Romania, from 2006 until 2012 and was elected again in June 2016.

In June 2016, the High Court sentenced Muntean to two years in jail for drunk driving as he hit three stationed cars and then abandoned his car and ran from the scene. The Police found him barefoot in a bush, with a dog in his arms. He claimed that it wasn’t him who caused the accident but his driver, but the judges didn’t believe him.

This conviction also activated a four-year suspended jail sentence that he had got in 2013 for abuse of office. That case was related to a series of illegal land transactions that the Deva mayor closed with a luxury car trafficker, which had damaged the state budget by some USD 360,000. Muntean thus received a six-year jail sentence.

editor@romania-insider.com