Update: DNA prosecutor Mihaela Iorga, prosecuted for favouring the perpetrator

National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) prosecutor, Mihaela Moraru Iorga, will be prosecuted for favouring the perpetrator and for intellectual forgery in continuous form (four material acts), a DNA release informed on Thursday.

Iorga was revoked from the DNA but resumed her post after a court decision. Iorga is to be suspended from the magistracy, sources say.

According to the DNA, during 2015-May 2017, upon the request of a defendant in a DIICOT file, Ploiesti territorial service, Prosecutor Moraru Iorga, in order to complicate the investigation and the defendant’s prosecution, with direct intent, helped him through several committal acts and omissions, hotnews.ro informs.

She allegedly conducted investigations out of the legal framework, in parallel with the DIICOT Ploiesti criminal investigation.

She reportedly had informal discussions with the defendant, telling him to have patience, as things do not work out over night. She took steps to take over a file registered with the DNA, with another prosecutor, having as justification that she is investigating an older case on the same deeds.

Upon taking over the case, the magistrate reportedly ordered a judicial tax and financial expertise “with favourable goals, able to truncate the criminal activity of the protected person, finalised with favourable conclusions” and “charged the anti-fraud inspectors who prepared the minutes – means of evidence considered by the judge of rights and freedoms to confirm the measure of remand of the person concerned on March 6, 2016, without there being any evidence in the file that would reasonably reveal , their criminal intent.”

“Moraru Iorga Mihaiela did not submit the expert report to the case file, after the handover of the document by the appointed experts. Moreover, the magistrate invoked, in four orders for extending the measure of judicial control, that the expert report was not completed (although this expert report had reached her on October 17, 2016. She ordered by ordinance the amount of the final fee and the payment of the value of the expertise, mostly from the funds of the National Anticorruption Directorate,” the DNA release reads.

The favoured person allegedly was businessman Florian Walter.

The file has been sent to the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ – Supreme Court).

Iorga was revoked from the DNA upon the order of Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi in July 2017 and subsequently returned to DNA following a court decision.

Moraru Iorga is reportedly involved in two resounding files.

She was the first case prosecutor in the Microsoft files. The Microsoft files have been instrumented by Mihaela Iorga, one of the prosecutors recalled from DNA last summer after the scandal of the DNA meeting recordings’ featuring DNA chief prosecutor Kovesi ordering prosecutors how to investigate some cases. Immediately after her recall, DNA announced that serious irregularities had been found in the files conducted by Mihaela Iorga, with the DNA chief prosecutor asking the Judicial Inspection to check if Iorga had observed the criminal procedure norms in this case.

Last week, DNA announced that it had dropped charges against former ministers Ecaterina Andronescu, Mihai Tănăsescu, Dan Nica, Adriana Ţicău, Daniel Funeriu, Alexandru Athanasiu and Şerban Mihăilescu in the high-sounding Microsoft file, as the statute of limitations on their deeds expired.

She was also involved in one of the Omar Hayssam files. The file on the privatization of former Baneasa Semiconductor enterprise, where Omar Hayssam was investigated, has been closed down. The prosecutor who instrumented the case, Mihaela Iorga, the one who also managed the high-sounding Microsoft file, recently closed as well, explains that the Baneasa semiconductor enterprise file has been closed as the charge was not stipulated in the criminal law anymore. Iorga decided to close down the case in June 2017.