Documents released in mass media on Thursday show that Ștefan Godei, the owner of the nursing home in Ilfov involved in the abused elderly scandal, has been close to Firea-Pandele family since 2014 and was employed in all the institutions where Firea worked until he became a minister. Godei’s last job was in the Senate, where he worked as a driver until February this year, when the journalistic investigations of the asylums of horrors became public. Gabriela Firea retorted, arguing that he was not her driver either to the Senate or to the City Hall.
However, documents reveal that Godei earned 3,000 lei each month, in the years 2022 and 2023 in Firea’s senatorial cabinet. The last salary collected on the payroll from the upper chamber of the Parliament was at the end of February, more precisely on February 27, 2023, reports gandul.ro and g4media.
Following the investigation launched by DIICOT in the scandal of the asylums of horror, Ștefan Godei was pre-arrested for 30 days. According to the DIICOT report with the arrest proposal, Ștefan Godei, the man who controlled the “Sf. Gabriel cel Viteaz” association targeted by the investigation, earned 3.7 million lei from the horror asylums, where the elderly and disabled people were beaten, left hungry, in unsanitary conditions, covered in worms and bugs.
On the other hand, Gabriela Firea claimed again, on Thursday, that Ștefan Godei, the patron of two of the asylums in Voluntari, has never been her driver. She admits, however, that Godei worked as a driver at the Capital City Hall, but not for her personally, but “for other people”, and at the Senate, where “he served colleagues from the senatorial cabinet for a while, as he did in all the institutions where he was active” .
“I am forced, unfortunately, to repeat what I stated the other day, following some information that appeared in the press. The defendant in the Ilfov county asylum file was NEVER MY DRIVER. I’ve had the same driver for 16-17 years, whom all the institutions, all the journalists, the whole town hall, the whole Parliament, etc. know. At the Capital City Hall, the man in this file was not my driver, but worked as a driver at the Administrative Office and for other people. He wasn’t my driver at the Senate either, but he served for a while the colleagues from the senatorial cabinet, as he did in all the institutions where he was active”, says Gabriela Firea in a statement sent by the Ministry of the Family.