Radio Free Europe: Romania’s transport minister offered bribes to state employees before becoming a whistleblower

Romania’s current transport minister, the Social Democrat Ciprian Șerban, offered bribes to representatives of a forest district in Iași County as a young businessman in 2012, according to recently surfaced documents and recordings.

Șerban gave bribes at least six times before reporting the offense to the National Anticorruption Directorate. He did so only after being threatened that he would be reported himself for failing to fulfill a contract won through an intermediary, writes Radio Free Europe.

The investigation, which includes video and audio recordings from the case file, shows that in March 2012, Ciprian Constantin Șerban, then a 26-year-old, entered the office of the head of the Răducăneni Forest District. Șerban introduced himself as the representative of a company that had just won the contract for annual planting and maintenance work on several dozen hectares of forest managed by the district. The winning company was Eden Star Forest SRL and was officially run by a certain Claudiu Ioan H., a man from Neamț County. In reality, Șerban controlled the company.

Șerban struck a deal with the Răducăneni Forestry District, allowing local workers to carry out forestry work. Although his company was officially paid for the services, he would withdraw cash and hand it to the chief forester, allegedly to pay the workers. Many workers never received their money due to local debts.

Șerban is the second minister in the Bolojan government to avoid charges of bribery after denouncing the act. The previous one, former deputy prime minister Dragoș Anastasiu, resigned.

After the investigation was published, the minister offered clarifications. He claims he accepted the sting operation to support investigative bodies in proving the offenses committed within that forest district.

“I noticed at one point that representatives of the Forest District, who coordinated one of the day laborer teams, withheld sums of money that were not justified either in site setup expenses or in the payment of the workers, suggesting they were commissions without explaining their purpose or justification. For this reason, I considered them illegal payments and immediately notified the authorities,” Șerban says.

Ciprian Șerban also argued that he later saw in the press that other dignitaries or politicians had also alerted the authorities in similar situations.

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