Anti-corruption prosecutor Mircea Negulescu on Wednesday resigned after several audio footages have been released with the prosecutor allegedly talking to the wife of a defendant.
“Considering an audio footage was released in the public space containing a dialogue assigned to a prosecutor working at the DNA Ploiesti, the magistrate has requested for the resignation on February 15, 2017,” reads a press release of the DNA.
Romania TV station, controlled by businessman Sebastian Ghita, a runaway defendant facing corruption charges in several files, released on Tuesday night several audio recordings where a man, about whom journalists claim is prosecutor Mircea Negulescu from DNA Ploiesti, is talking to the wife of a businessman currently arrested for corruption crimes, Vlad Constantin, while revealing to her details and facts from criminal files.
“I told him in the front of my officer. I said: < Look, do you want to be free by Christmas? Make a denunciation on me, that I did something, that I helped you in any way, do you understand me? You are free to do that>, for this is how those ones want to determine them, things are clear. I explained about this Manole guy (…) Manole has plenty of money to give you. Well, and to avoid giving you the money, isn’t it better that Vlad should stay in jail? (…) He is not the target. It’s a tool that they want to use (…) The only problem is that I left t work at the DNA and you cannot take the cases which are under the DNA’s jurisdiction with you. I left the cases and I explained to him. < Vlad, you see an enemy in me considering that after I left, the prosecutors would do their job on those two case if they were honest-minded>. They wouldn’t call those ones to make statements that I had been hearing them and pressuring them and then both cases went to the Prosecutor’s Office upon the Supreme Court where I was investigated for abusive conduct,” the prosecutor would have told the defendant’s wife.
According to the recording, he would have given information on other persons involved in that case.
“They drove him crazy, he did filed a complaint over something, with the deputy, Adi Mincu. He didn’t mention me, Mircea Negulescu, but it’s inhering. It doesn’t bother me for I will prove there was no deal, as I don’t do that. I have never done this. I arrested half of country and I made a deal with Adi Mincu? (….) This is how the Papici file emerged, that file where a lot of people went in jail. There were many. It was done with Vlad’s help. People know that it was known who is helping me. This is no blackmail. He doesn’t understand these things. He thinks he is in jail for he says I didn’t want to solve the two files,” Negulescu allegedly said.
In the recording the man suspected to be prosecutor Negulescu is heard offending the Romanian Prosecutor General.
“I have no political color. A ratty rag. They and the prosecutor general another ratty rag. This is no abuse,” the prosecutor would have said.
Mircea Negulescu is the prosecutor who investigated, among others, the “Tony Blair” file, where ex-PM Victor Ponta and Sebastian Ghita are prosecuted.
Romania’s Prosecutor General, Augustin Lazar, on Wednesday notified the Judicial Inspection of the Superior Council of Magistracy to probe into potential disciplinary errors in the case of the recordings allegedly featuring prosecutor Mircea Negulescu.