Former politician Elena Udrea – currently in prison, where she is serving 6 years in prison in the Gala Bute case – gets rid of the Hidroelectrica case, in which she is accused of having accepted a bribe of almost 5 million dollars from the “smart boy” Bogdan Buzăianu to intervene in the sense of keeping the conditions negotiated in a series of contracts with Hidroelectrica.
The same solution was ordered in the case of Dan Andronic, accused of perjury. The decision was taken on Tuesday by the court, which invoked the decision of the Constitutional Court regarding the prescription.
The ruling pronounced by the Bucharest Court of Appeal today is not final. However, the court decided to confiscate from Elena Udrea 2.5 million euros, respectively 900,000 euros.
The former Tourism and Development minister Elena Udrea is now in the Târgșorul Nou Women’s Penitentiary, where she is serving 6 years of imprisonment in the Gala Bute case, a decision she challenged through several extraordinary appeals, all of which were rejected. The final sentence of conviction was given in June 2018 and confirmed in April 2022 by rejecting an appeal for annulment.
At the time of the 2018 decision, Udrea was in Costa Rica. She had fled Romania at the beginning of 2018 and requested asylum in Costa Rica. In October 2018, she was detained by Interpol in Costa Rica and subsequently imprisoned. She was released in December 2018, after the Constitutional Court ruled that the panels of 5 judges from the Supreme Court were illegal.
Elena Udrea returned to Romania on July 8, 2019, almost a year and a half after her escape to Costa Rica. She then announced her return to the country on Facebook, saying that she voluntarily renounced her refugee status in Costa Rica because she wanted to raise her daughter at home. In April 2022, when the supreme court decided that it had to go to trial, Elena Udrea left Romania before the court’s decision, being caught a few hours later in Bulgaria.
Also, in March 2021, Elena Udrea was sentenced by the Bucharest Court of Appeal to 8 years in prison in the case in which she is accused of inciting bribery and money laundering regarding the financing of the 2009 electoral campaign of Traian Băsescu. And in this case, Udrea has so far used numerous appeals and, asking for the termination of the criminal process on the grounds that the facts are time-barred, citing the decisions of the CCR.
The Hidrolectrica file
In this case, pending before the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Elena Udrea was sent to court by the DNA for allegedly accepting a bribe of almost 5 million dollars from the “smart boy” Bogdan Buzăianu to intervene in order to preserve the negotiated conditions to a series of contracts with Hidroelectrica.
Udrea was sent to court in December 2017, for influence peddling and money laundering, and Dan Andronic for perjury.
This case was retried. In July 2020, the supreme court decided that the Hidroelectrica trial, in which Elena Udrea is accused of influence peddling and money laundering, and Dan Andronic of perjury, can begin.
The first term of this trial at the Bucharest Court of Appeal was in October 2021, when Udrea went to court, but did not enter the courtroom, on the grounds that she is not vaccinated against COVID.
The former Minister of Development is accused of accepting a bribe of almost 5 million dollars from the “smart boy” Bogdan Buzăianu to intervene in order to preserve the conditions negotiated in a series of contracts with Hidroelectrica. The prosecutors claim that Elena Udrea “accepted the promise made by a businessman, through intermediaries, to receive the sum of 5,000,000 dollars in order to exert his influence on the decision-makers within the Ministry of Economy and those within SC Hidroelectrica SA, in order to maintain, in the conditions already negotiated (price and quantity of energy supplied), the contracts that the businessman’s company had concluded with SC Hidroelectrica SA”. It is about Bogdan Buzăianu, considered the strongest “smart guy” in energy.
From this amount, Udrea would have received, in November 2011, through intermediaries, 3,800,000 dollars, and a claim of 900,000 euros, respectively “an amount that a businessman’s company had lent to a third party and which was guaranteed with social parts of a commercial company that owned two publications”.
Dan Andronic was the owner the “Evenimentul Zilei” newspaper. According to the prosecutors, in order to hide that she was the real beneficiary of the claim of 900,000 euros (which would also have given her the power to influence the activity of the company with media activity – Evenimentul Zilei, n.r.), Elena Udrea “took over the claim of at the company controlled by the businessman, through the interposition of another front company, belonging to an acquaintance”.