The PSD leadership has decided on Monday to give ‘total support’ to Deputy PM Sevil Shhaideh and Minister for European Funds Rovana Plumb, targeted by the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) in the Belina file, hotnews.ro informs.
“We have heard our two colleagues, their points of view. The conclusion is very clear: they fully observed the provisions of the law and consider themselves innocent,” said at the end of the PSD National Standing Bureau meeting the leader of the Social Democrat deputies Ioan Muntean.
He said that “the final decision was to grant them total support” and the two “were asked not to resign.”
Sevil Shhaideh and Rovana Plumb “will be defended by all party members,” Muntean also said.
Sevil Shhaideh said she would not resign: “No, I won’t resign, under any circumstances.” She added that the decisions she made were according to the law.
Rovana Plumb also said she sees no reason to resign. “I have always made decisions in good faith for the people’s interest, with high responsibility and seriousness to defend Romanians’ rights. I don’t believe I should resign, as long as I have always considered Romania. I’ve done nothing wrong, I acted according to the law,” the Minister for European Funds Rovana Plumb said. She added that European Funds are vital for Romania and continuity is needed.
Ruling Social Democrat Party chairman Liviu Dragnea said on Sunday 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.
Ruling Social Democrat Party chairman Liviu Dragnea said on Sunday 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.
“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 property to public property. 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.
Deputy Prime Minister Sevil Shhaideh is criminally prosecuted by the DNA for abuse of office in a corruption file, with deeds referring to the time when she used to be secretary of state within the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration, DNA informed on Friday.
The file regards the illegal transfer of Belina Island and Pavel channel on the Danube River in the administration of the Teleorman County Council, run at that time by the SocDem chairman Liviu Dragnea.
Along with the deputy premier, former minister of Environment Rovana Plumb, currently minister delegate for European funds, is also prosecuted and other four civil servants working with the Land Register offices in Alexandria and Teleorman County.