Former tourism minister Elena Udrea remains in prison after magistrates at the High Court of Cassation and Justice rejected her request to review her 6-year prison sentence in the Gala Bute case.
Elena Udrea has been incarcerated at Târgşor Penitentiary since June 2022, after being extradited from Bulgaria, where she had fled shortly before her conviction.
This is the eighth time the court has rejected such a request. Udrea has been incarcerated since June 2022, after being extradited from Bulgaria, where she had fled shortly before her conviction.
A panel of five judges at the Supreme Court rejected Elena Udrea’s appeal as unfounded. Two magistrates issued separate opinions, granting Elena Udrea’s request to review her sentence.
The High Court’s decision is final.
The panel also included Judge Lia Savonea, who recently overturned Mario Iorgulescu’s conviction of 13 years and 8 months, acquitted former Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, and returned the “Revolution Case” in which Ion Iliescu is accused to the Prosecutor’s Office. Another judge on the panel was Mihail Udroiu, Alina Bica’s former advisor at DIICOT.
Elena Udrea and Alina Bica fled to Costa Rica in 2018 to escape convictions. The course of this trial was quite complicated. Udrea was sent to trial in 2015 and finally convicted in June 2018, but she fled before the sentence was pronounced, being detected and imprisoned in Costa Rica.
Later, in December 2018, the Constitutional Court ruled that the law was not respected when the 5-judge panels of this court were formed. Consequently, the convictions in the “Gala Bute” case were suspended, Udrea was released from detention in Costa Rica and returned to Romania. In April 2022, based on a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Supreme Court rejects an appeal for annulment filed by Elena Udrea and confirms the six-year prison sentence. Elena Udrea flees to Bulgaria, but is caught and sent back to the country, being imprisoned in June 2022.
According to the DNA, Udrea coordinated a system through which the people closest to her, namely Lungu, Topoliceanu, Nastasia and Breazu, received, with her knowledge, sums of money from representatives of commercial companies to guarantee their timely payment of works financed by the ministry she headed. Investigators say that the amounts obtained went either directly into Elena Udrea’s assets (in cash or through the payment of goods and services), or into the assets of persons indicated by her (the Bucharest Organization of the PDL and Rudel Obreja).
Udrea is also accused of having determined other officials in the ministry to violate their duties on the occasion of the acquisition of advertising services at the Bute Gala, prejudicing the institution’s budget and creating an undue benefit for Rudel Obreja. The investigation established damage of approximately three million euros, money that would have either been directed to Udrea or would have reached the PDL Bucharest organization or other people involved.