Romanian arrested for taking RON 1.5 mln to influence state bank president in signing IT contracts

Romanian prosecutors from the National Anticorruption Department (DNA) arrested a local businessman for allegedly receiving RON 1.5 million from several IT firms to determine a state bank manager to award contracts to those firms. The arrested businessman is named Bogdan-Viorel Mitu and the prosecutors charged him with influence peddling. Mitu, who is a former administrator of a firm called Tape Computer, is accused of having received a total of almost RON 1.5 million (some EUR 330,000) from two IT firms to use his influence and determine the president of a state-owned bank sign contracts with these companies. DNA hasn’t released the name of the bank, but local News.ro reports that the lender in question is EximBank. The state only owns one other bank, namely CEC Bank. DNA prosecutors say that, in the second half of 2011, Bogdan-Viorel Mitu asked a total of over RON 960,000 (EUR 212,000) from the representative of an IT company, money that he actually received in January – September 2012. In return, Mitu promised to make the president of the state-owned bank sign four contracts with this company. The contracts’ total value was EUR 696,406. Moreover, in a similar context, Bogdan-Viorel Mitu asked and received over RON 532,000 (EUR 117,000) from another IT company, to help it sign a contract worth EUR 643,000 with the same state-owned bank. Mitu could spend 30 days in jail if the judges from the Bucharest Court approve the prosecutors’ request in this sense. The DNA prosecutors haven't mentioned if they were also pursuing the bank president who Mitu allegedly influenced. In the period targeted by DNA's investigation, Eximbank's president was Ionut Costea, the bother-in-law of former Social-Democratic leader Mircea Geoana. Costea was president of Eximbank from 2009 until September 2012, when he was replaced with Traian Halalai. Costea had one of the highest salaries in Romania's public sector at that time, of over EUR 20,000 per month. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com