Romanian justice minister rejects all candidates for head of anticorruption department

The process to select a head prosecutor for Romania’s anticorruption department DNA will restart after the Justice Ministry did not select any of the four candidates who applied for the job. Justice minister Tudorel Toader interviewed the four candidates on Thursday and announced his decision on Friday, July 27. “Following the selection procedure, we inform you that no proposal for the appointment of the head prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Department will be made out of the participating candidates. The procedure will restart,” the Justice Ministry said. No candidate fulfilled the needed requirements to be appointed to the job, the ministry said. “No candidate presented sufficient elements for a plan based on an analysis of the current situation that would later allow an objective and transparent process of evaluating managerial performances,” according to a press release from the ministry. Four prosecutors submitted their resumes in the selection procedure for the position of chief DNA prosecutor: DNA deputy chief prosecutor Marius Iacob; Florentina Mirica, the head of DNA’s section for combating corruption in the justice system; Elena Grecu, a section head within the DNA; and Cristian Lazar, deputy chief of the prosecution and criminology section with the General Prosecutor’s Office. The chief DNA prosecutor jobs has been vacant since July 9, after president Klaus Iohannis signed the decree to dismiss former DNA chief prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi based on a request made by the justice minister in February and a Constitutional Court decision that gave the president no alternative but to revoke Kovesi. editor@romania-insider.com