Liviu Dragnea, sent to court in the Tel Drum case

The National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) has indicted Liviu Dragnea, the former president of the PSD, in the Tel Drum case. Dragnea is accused of forming an organized criminal group, abuse of office and other crimes.

The file in which the former PSD leader is being sued, opened in 2017, has over 770 volumes of evidence in the investigation. The indictment alone has over 1,400 pages.

Along with Liviu Dragnea, eight other people were sent to court, officials in the Teleorman County Council at the time of the acts or natural persons, as well as the Tel Drum company.

The anti-corruption prosecutors started the criminal investigation against Liviu Dragnea in the Tel Drum file on June 26, 2020, charging him with several corruption deeds.

Romanian prosecutors were mainly investigating charges of EU funds embezzlement in the Tel Drum file, following a complaint filed by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).

Established 20 years ago as the construction company of the Teleorman County Council, Tel Drum was privatized in early 2000s, when Liviu Dragnea was leading the County Council.

Investigators say that Dragnea would have never stopped controlling Tel Drum, through middlemen. Tel Drum has lured tens of millions of euro, money from the state budget or from EU funds and has won most of the public tenders it has participated in.

Even after Dragnea’s imprisonment and after the company had been placed in insolvency over the charge of EU funds embezzlement, Tel Drum kept on being granted contracts with the state.

Former leader of the Social Democratic Party, Liviu Dragnea spent 2 years and 2 months in prison, serving a fraction of two thirds of his prison sentence in the Teleorman fictitious hiring file.

He was imprisoned in May 2019 and released on parole in July 2021.