The Prosecutor’s Office upon the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ) has announced on Monday that it contemplates the possibility of appealing against the statute of limitations in the Microsoft case, in which seven former ministers have been cleared of all charges.
“The Prosecutor’s Office upon ICCJ is conducting an jurisprudential analysis over the legal conditions of filing a referral in the interests of the law against the statute of limitations in the Microsoft file,” says a press release.
By the law, the referral in the interests of the law is a procedure through which Romania’s prosecutor general (in this case Augustin Lazar) or the minister of Justice, through the prosecutor general, have the right to ensure that the law is uniformly enforced and interpreted across the entire country, and to ask the High Court of Cassation and Justice to rule on the law files that have been solved in court differently. This right is stipulated in the article 414 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The Prosecutor’s Office’s move comes after DNA has announced last week that the criminal prosecution in the Microsoft file is ending in the case of seven former ministers, Ecaterina Andronescu, Alexandru Athanasiu, Dan Nica, Silvia Ţicău, Mihai Tănăsescu, Şerban Mihăilescu and Daniel Funeriu. The statute of limitations has expired in the case of the six former ministers, while in Daniel Funeriu’s case they found out the criminal deed does not exist.