Prosecution extended against Sebastian Ghita. He is banned to serve as MP, to leave residential town and to talk to PM Ponta

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The deputy and media mogul claims it’s a political file aiming to topple Ponta Government. Moreover, he heralds that PM Ponta himself will be subject to legal restrictions pending trial. His case also hit the international headlines.

 

Anti-corruption prosecutors on Wednesday extended prosecution against MP Sebastian Ghita for new corruption charges allegedly committed during his parliamentary term, but also before that.

National Anti-corruption Directorate says Ghita is investigated for influence peddling, tax evasion, money laundering, complicity to EU fund embezzlement and to bribing voters at the parliamentary elections in 2012 and at the presidential race in 2014.

Prosecutors alleged Ghita paid EUR 350,000 to Moldovans who have Romanian citizenship to vote for Ponta in the November presidential race that he eventually lost to incumbent president Klaus Iohannis. Ghita is also suspected of granting illegal incentives such as frying pans to voters in the 2012 parliamentary elections where he won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.

Ghita received the prosecutors’ summons last week and came to DNA Ploiesti on Wednesday morning. He is subject to legal restrictions pending trial in the file of Iulian Hertanu, premier Ponta’s brother in law. Ghita also received the interdiction to exert his MP position and to leave Ploiesti city for two months. Moreover, prosecutors seized Ghita’s goods. The accounts of 51 companies controlled by the tycoon have been blocked; among them there are RTV Satellite Net and Teamnet International.

Prosecutors say that during 2000-2015 Sebastian Ghita illegally obtained important sums of money by influence peddling or apparently legal from public funds. This money would have been ‘laundered’ and then, part of the sums were used for illegal purposes, more precisely for bribing voters at the 2012 parliamentary elections and at 2014 presidential ballot.

The financial transactions would have aimed to avoid paying taxes to the state, representing VAT and tax on profit.

According to DNA, the total sum of money deriving from public funds and subsequently ‘laundered’ mounts to almost RON 130m, with a prejudice of about RON 37m caused to the state.

After leaving DNA headquarters, the lawmaker slammed the decisions, saying they were probably meant to humiliate him. He informed he would challenge the restriction of leaving the city, arguing the abuses against citizens cannot be tolerated.

“Today I realize that all this file is just a stage, a step in everything that has happened to me in the past two weeks, constant pressures,” Ghita said.

He confirmed that part of his case is referring to the presidential elections of November 2014, yet claiming it is a political file targeting “the incumbent government tumbling-down”.

“Part of the file is eyeing the presidential elections. I won’t apologize and I am not sorry that the Social Democrat Party, Victor Ponta, me and many others have tried to win the electorate’s trust for the Romania president’s position. We lost these presidential elections and we must stop this rule that after losing elections the losers are destroyed, humiliated and dragged into prosecutor’s offices. Their families are threatened, they got their companies impounded and also the companies of their families, friends, their mother are sought out and so on. It’s awful and we must all fight against them. Personally, I am doing that. I am also banned to talk to Mr. Victor Ponta,” Ghita stated.

He even stated that prosecutors intend to make premier Ponta resign from office and it is possible they place him under legal restrictions pending trial and thus to forbid the prime minister enter the Government headquarters.

Ghita also said he would file several audio recordings to the Parliament that show the anti-corruption prosecutor who has been hearing him told several businessmen in Ploiesti they will be put behing bars if they did not say what he wanted. The mogul said he would ask for the Romania Prosecutor General’s protection on this matter.

Referring to the ban to exert his MP position, he said “I told the prosecutor he was running tests on me and I don’t think I or any other deputy need to be guinea pigs.”

Later on,  Sebastian Ghita asked the Parliament in a letter to react to a decision passed by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) on his case that bans him from exercising his elected position; he argued such a decision seemed to him “extremely serious, unconstitutional and with potential repercussions on the democracy in Romania”.

PM Ponta also commented on this ban, saying he has never heard of a MP being banned to work, as only in dictatorial regimes would happen that.

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