Former PSD chairman Liviu Dragnea, imprisoned for corruption at Rahova Penitentiary since May 2019, has been brought under escort to the High Court of Cassation and Justice on Tuesday for an extraordinary appeal through which he is trying to obtain a retrial of his fictitious hiring file in which he had been sentenced to three years and a half in prison.
“I am completely innocent, I have been under bars for 8 months,” Dragnea told magistrates.
Dragnea also said that DNA’s statement that he would have known Adriana Botorogeanu and Anisa Stoica is not true. Prosecutors used to say that the two women had been hired fictitiously at the Department for Child Protection Teleorman when they actually went to work at the PSD’s headquarters.
“I strongly believe I am totally innocent and I have been staying at Rahova Penitentiary for 8 months while innocent. That’s why I haven’t paid the compensations, for it is not normal to pay for a crime I’ve never committed”, Dragnea told judges, according to the local news agencies.
Flavia Teodosiu, Dragnea’s lawyer, said the crime of which Dragnea is accused is not stipulated in the criminal law, referring to provisions of the Labour Code, arguing that the director of the Child Protection Department should have sanctioned the two women employed there.
The Supreme Court has delayed a verdict for January 21.
The Supreme Court had overruled the appeal in this file in December and thus Dragnea remained in jail.