CNATDCU General Council: Petre Toba and Florentin Pandele have plagiarized the PhD works

The National Council for Attesting Titles, Diplomas and Certificates (CNATDCU) has decided on Wednesday, 36 votes to one, that the former Minister Petre Toba and Voluntari Mayor Florentin Pandele have plagiarism the doctoral works.

The CNATDCU General Council will propose therefore the withdrawal of doctorate titles for the two to the Education Minister Mircea Dumitru, who is to sign the order to withdraw the titles. Subsequently, according to the law, the two can request the Ministry of Education the revocation of the order and then they can turn to the court.

The General Council of the National Council for Attesting Titles, Diplomas and University Certificates rejected on September 7 the reports of the military science committee, which decided a week before that Petre Toba and Florentin Pandele have not plagiarized their doctoral theses.

On August 22 the “Carol I” National Defence University recommended that Interior Minister Petre Toba should keep his PhD title, arguing that the minister’s thesis “was useful”.

The Defence university, which granted minister Toba the PhD title, analyzed the content of the paper, saying that “the scientific paper is still topical, while his thesis was useful by searching action ways in the field of the international police cooperation, which can be concretely seen through the various projects implemented by the Romanian Police next to the international bodies on cross-border monitoring, information exchange and permanent technical equipment to support these projects.” Therefore, the Ethic Committee of the university recommended “maintenance of the PhD title granted to Mr. Petre Toba”.

Former Interior minister Petre Toba filed on Monday a criminal complaint at the Prosecutor’s Office against the members of the CNATDCU General Council, which voted to set up the last technical committee probing into his PhD work, while accusing potential abuse of office. Toba’s complaint is also against the members of the fourth technical committee which decided that the former Interior minister’s PhD work is “a massive plagiarism”.

The CNATDCU technical committee ruled last Friday that the mayor of Voluntari, Florentin Pandele and the former Interior Minister Petre Toba have plagiarised their PhD works.