Ruling Social Democrat Party chairman Liviu Dragnea said that the Belina Island file where deputy PM Sevil Shhaideh and minister for European Funds Rovana Plumb are charged for corruption is “fiction” and an attack against the Government, aiming at destroying PSD.
Regarding the DNA’s request for criminally prosecuting Rovana Plumb, Dragnea said he would veto it in the Chamber of Deputies.
“In my view, it’s a violent attack against the Government, for we talk about a government resolution among other several hundreds of thousands adopted in Romania, referring to a transfer of property from the public sector to the public sector, with one important specification — on a five-year period. We are discussing a transfer not towards the private sector but to a public institution, the County Council, so from public to public. And I am not sure there haven’t ever been transfers of property to a local authority so that an investment, a private one, could be carried out,” Liviu Dragnea told private TV broadcaster Antena 3.
He continued that he had received information that a large corporation wants to make a huge investment in Romania and needs 80-100 hectares. “Do you think that anyone can sign a land transfer anymore in the Government after this story?,” the PSD chair said.
Dragnea further explained that the Belina Island is an area full of weeds and there are also several ponds.
“This piece of property was transferred from the state’s public domain to Teleorman county’s public domain, so still public, and that’s it,” he pointed out, adding that “all the ponds in Romania are rented to private firms for fishing, all of them.”
The SocDem chairman admitted he went fishing on Belina Island, but denied he would have had any advantage from the transfer of those plots of land from Teleorman County Council to TelDrum.
“No. Many people fish there, (…) you simply go and fish, just like on the Danube, but I have been fishing in many place in this country,” Dragnea said.
He added that former PM Victor Ponta’s statement according to which the latter did not realize at the moment of the Emergency Ordinance adoption that Belina Lake will not be transferred to the “Teleorman people”, as he was told but to TeDrum firm, is “false”.
“The file is fiction, but has real consequences. Two very important female ministers, but I don’t think I am the stake. I believe the stake is PSD. On the other hand, I think all that has been lately releases, accusations, statements, tapping, disclosures following pressures on some judges, are stirring a lot of fuss and fear, “Dragnea also stated.
“I have received all kind of information this weekend, I don’t know if it’s real or not, that they (DNA prosecutors) won’t restrict to me, they also want to take my kid and to detain him…I can’t imagine why. Only because he’s my son. It’s a fight between abuse and democracy,” the PSD chair concluded.