The Bucharest Court of Appeal on Tuesday overruled the anti-corruption prosecutors’ appeal against the Bucharest Tribunal’s decision to lift the preventive measure of judicial control against mayor of Craiova, Lia Olguta Vasilescu. The ruling is final.
The mayor of Craiova claimed that the anti-corruption prosecutors had brought no new evidence against her and had asked again that she should be banned from taking part in radio and TV shows.
“The judicial control referred to the fact that I am banned to go to the radio and TV. Yet, let’s not forget that I am a public person. It’s not like I am banned to talked about the trial, but I just cannot go to radio and TV, which it seems too much. At the same, I am banned to get in touch with the witnesses and to the indicters in the file. I didn’t get in touch with any of the indicters. The witnesses are the public servants f the Craiova City Hall, I work with them on a daily basis, I have never asked them <Are you going to the DNA?>, <What will you say?> It went too far. The indicter also went beyond a joke for there are already injuries not against the mayor of Craiova, but against me as a woman, as a mother. There are sexual hints, all kind of offenses,” Olguta Vasilescu said.
The mayor and her lawyer also announced they had got more evident to sue the indicter, businessman Petru Becheru.
Ten day ago, the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) has requested a preventive measure on Lia Olguta Vasilescu, mayor of Craiova, filed to the Bucharest Court, so that she can no longer get in touch with witnesses in the files she is involved in.
New charges appeared against the mayor of Craiova, as one of the DNA denouncers said that a city hall employee had tried to bribe him in order to withdraw the complaint.
Another reason would be that the mayor has tried to discredit a denouncer in the file she was sent to court for corruption offenses
The mayor selectively published on her Facebook page several transcripts of the discussions with the city hall officials and handed to the DNA by Petre Becheru, president of the Romarta Association of Owners in Craiova and then she invited her supporters to judge the evidence.
The mayor tried to promote the idea that Petre Becheru is crazy, by publishing a photograph that shows he has a sight defect. Following this move, the witness was the target of insults and death threats from several of the mayor’s supporters, digi24.ro reports.
On the other hand, the prosecutors’ report reads that “on August 3, during a TV talk-show, the defender expressed her position by defending in the same manner, trying to submit another procedural framework to the file in which she is charged, currently before the Bucharest Court. Concluding, the prosecutors say that judicial control would be a warranty for the criminal file’s procedural trial, a measure proportional to the seriousness of the charges in the criminal file and to the defender’s conduct,” DNA informs.
The mayor of Craiova, Social Democrat Olguta Vasilescu was subpoenaed at the National Anti-corruption Directorate on May 30 to be informed that prosecution had been extended against her. More precisely, Vasilescu is now charged with one more corruption offense: money laundering.
Olguta Vasilescu is accused of using her influence to obtain money for the electoral campaign, while benefitting at the same time of her mayor position to increase her political capital, investigators say.
Vasilescu is charged with four crimes of bribe taking, with using authority and influence in the view of obtaining money or other undue benefits (three offenses) and money laundering.