Former AEP chief Daniel Barbu prosecuted in the political party subsidies file

Daniel Barbu, former president of the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP), has been prosecuted by the anti-corruption prosecutors on Wednesday in the party subsidies file. Barbu is accused he has hindered checks at the political parties that were probing into how they were spending their state financial subsidies and, moreover, that he would have stopped the checks over the ruling Social Democrat Party.

The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) has decided on Monday to extend the prosecution against Mircea Draghici, treasurer of the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) in regard to another offence of embezzlement in this file. Draghici is charged with embezzling some hundreds of thousand of euros from the PSD subsidies.

DNA prosecutors say that Daniel Barbu, in his capacity of AEP president, would not have monitored during May 27, 2017-February 27, 2019 the destination of the subsidies granted to the political parties, namely he would not have ordered annual checks for every party, if the parties observed the legal provisions regarding their revenues (including the ones coming from public funds) and regarding their expenses. Moreover, Barbu is accused of stopping „certain ongoing checks.”

More precisely, through an address dating back on January 22, 2019, following a letter addressed by the treasurer of a party to the AEP, the suspect, in his capacity of AEP president, would have ordered in a discretionary way, that all checks targeting that political party should be stopped.