Update: Fugitive former anti-organized crime chief Alina Bica arrested in Italy

Former head of the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) Alina Bica has been detained in Italy after being on the run in the past 2 years.

Bica had been sentenced to 4 years in prison for corruption. She fled the country in early 2018 and she was placed on APB warrant in the summer of 2018 in the file where she had been sentenced to prison for favoring the offender.

The chief of the Romanian Police, Liviu Vasilescu has announced on Friday evening that Bica had been caught in Italy, along with another fugitive defendant, businessman Ioan Bene. They are in the custody of the Italian Police and are to be brought in Romanian in the upcoming period. Bene was sentenced to 6 years in jail for tax evasion and forgery.

Asked if Bica and Bene were arrested at the same time, the Head of the Police said that they have been tracked in the same area. “I cannot provide more information. The court will order the procedures for their return to Romania”, Vasilescu said.

Alina Bica requested the status of political refugee in Costa Rica in January 2018, and she was arrested there at some point with her friend, Elena Udrea, also in on the run following a prison sentence in Romania. After they were released from the jail in Costa Rica, Bica fled again, being allegedly seen in Panama and Spain.

Bica was sentenced to 4 years in prison for aiding and abetting in this case in November 2016; the sentence remained final in June 2018.

In March 2019 the Supreme Court overturned the sentence based on the Constitutional Court ruling on the illegal structure of five-judge panels.

However, Alina Bica’s appeal was rejected this Wednesday and the sentence handed down in November 2016 was upheld.

According to the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), in 2013 businessman Ovidiu Tender asked Alina Bica to help him obtain a suspended sentence in the RAFO file which was in the dockets of the Bucharest Court. Bica followed suit and asked her subordinates at DIICOT to seek a suspended sentence for Tender.