Judge Geanina Terceanu (photo 1) has been sentenced to seven years in prison for bribe taking in the ‘Transfers’ File’. Victor Becali was sentenced to 5 years and 8 months, and Ioan Becali remains with the sentence of 7 years and 4 months. The rulings are final.
Businessman Cristi Borcea (photo 2) and two lawyers have been acquitted, ziare.com informs.
The High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ – Supreme Court) has decided to seize the amount of EUR 185,000, money used by the Becali brothers to bribe Judge Geanina Terceanu.
The Bucharest Court of Appeals sentenced Ioan Becali to 7 years and 4 months in prison in November 2016, Victor Becali to 5 years and 8 months, Cristian Borcea to 7 years and 10 months and former Judge Geanina Terceanu to 5 years and six months in the bribery file of EUR 195,000 received by Terceanu when she was a judge with the Bucharest Court to give a favourable solution in the football players ‘Transfers File’.
The National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) announced in February 2016 that former judge Geanina Terceanu, brothers Ioan and Victor Becali, Cristi Borcea and attorneys Antonie George Iorgovan and Costel Daniel Petre have been indicted.
Terceanu was accused of bribe taking, the impresarios and the former director of Dinamo Football Club of bribe giving and the lawyers of perjury.
According to the prosecutors, the former judge allegedly received EUR 195,000 to declare innocent those involved in transfers file, acquitted in 2012.
On February 24, 2009 Judge Geanina Terceanu was assigned to deal with the transfers’ file, in which Cristian Borcea, Ioan and Victor Becali were prosecuted along with other football leaders for fraud and tax evasion.
On April 3, 2012, Geanina Terceanu ruled a judgment of acquittal in the file to all defendants according to art 10, letter ‘a’, of the Criminal Procedure Code of 1968 – ‘no deed’.
“The existing evidence in the case file revealed that – in order to deliver this acquittal – Geanina Terceanu received from defendants Ioan and Victor Becali and from suspect Cristian Borcea, in several tranches, a total of EUR 220,000 starting April 2009 until May 2012. The money received as bribe was given to the magistrate by the three individuals either personally or through intermediaries, in various locations in Bucharest, Ilfov and Ialomita counties. In 2009, part of the money was used by Terceanu to buy a house,” the prosecutors say.
The report issued by DNA shows that Geanina Terceanu received a tranche of money during a match on Ghencea stadium in Bucharest and one in the house of brothers Ioan and Victor Becali in Pipera neighbourhood.
Following the re-trial, all the defendants received in March 2014, sentences with execution: Cristian Borcea and Ioan Becali – six years and four months, Victor Becali – four years and eight months, Gheorghe Copos – three years and eight months, Mihai Stoica – three years and six months, Gheorghe Netoiu and Jean Padureanu – three and four years respectively, and Gheorghe Popescu – three years, one month and ten days.
Of the eight people involved in football, only Cristian Borcea is still behind bars, the others have been released conditionally.