After a student left a teacher the money collected from colleagues, DNA prosecutors were cooked in the office. “We returned to school and they were all there.”

On Wednesday, June 19, 2024, at 2 pm, a student from the Faculty of Engineering and Technologies applied from the University of Life Sciences “King Mihai I” (USVT) called Mihaela Moatr. The student was the one who usually collected the “absence” money from her colleagues. The faculty's prodecana received her in her office and, after they discussed briefly about the bad payers, took the money. Immediately after the young woman left, the prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) entered the office, writes the school website 9. What happened to the teacher and other colleagues involved?

But the interest of the prosecutors was a little older. Since February 2024, prosecutors have started to follow the situation at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Technologies. Judicial sources say that Mihaela Moatăr asked some students to raise various amounts of money between 100 and 400 lei from their colleagues for each absence at the forestry disciplines and the correction of torrents and phytosociology, to allow them to take the exams. In February, it would have collected 6,000 lei, and later, in June, 7,000 lei. On June 19, when the prosecutors made the flagrant, 1,300 lei. And other teachers were doing the same. They all have salaries of over 10,000 lei per month.

The data in the investigation show that they “did not show up at all the class hours they had to support, nor at all the hours of the laboratory, and at the end of each month, by false, they made non-reasons, targeted/approved by the department director and by the faculty dean, from which they showed the course”. The tips were needed to be able to take their salaries.

In order to enter the exam, the students had to pay these justified amounts as “the value of the absences”. Absences made, in fact, by their teachers, who did not come to classes.

The money was collected by a few students. They even gave the payers and receipts that the Institute of Plant Biotechnology wrote, an NGO of teachers of the institution, led by dean Dorin Camen. They wrote on receipts that the money paid by the students would be for “enrollment in the association” or “hunting simulator”.

According to prosecutors, Mihaela Moatr would have taken around 6-7,000 lei per month, and through the Erasmus program it settled around 700 euros. Petru Ioan Dragomir, the director of department of the faculty, took for absences at the course of “hunting and salmonic fauna” around 4,000 lei.

Problems and with European money

Regarding the European funds, teachers participated in various Erasmus programs of academic exchanges in other countries, such as Serbia, Croatia or Slovakia where they went for one day to register, then returned home, but set up several hundred euros for accommodation and transport for the whole program, according to information from the DNA file. When they returned to the country, they falsified supporting documents for these trips. Each one put a few hundred euros in their pocket. These are facts from 2022 and 2023.

Moarer, Dragomir and Stefan are researched for both bribery -for the payment of absences -and because they have used or presented false or incomplete documents or statements for the use of European funds.

The scheme was as follows: the teachers fake that they participated in trips in the Erasmus programs, but in fact they only received the day of day and for other expenses.

What happens to teachers in the present

School 9 wanted to find out what is the current status of teachers.

Three teachers who are charged in the file for a continuous and false bribery for unfairly retention of funds from the budget of the European Union are still employed by the University. I no longer take courses, but they have a research norm. This is Mihaela Moatăr, Petru Ioan Dragomir and Carolina Stefan. After the prosecutors' descent and until two months ago, Moarer was a prodecan. She is still a member of the University Senate today.

Petru Ioan Dragomir is still head of department and a member of the Senate. Only he offered a point of view for school9: in the management positions he was chosen, which is why he could keep them, and “the public morality will never be over the presumption of innocence”.

The University says they are waiting for the DNA file to be resolved to apply a sanction.

Under judicial control but at work

In June last year, the prosecutors put the three, Moarer, Dragomir and Stefan, under judicial control for 60 days, until August 18, under the obligation “not to approach or communicate directly or indirectly with the suspects/defendants”. That is, with about 100 students who, when the researched teachers returned to college, they had to hold their arrears at their courses. They gave them with other teachers, but they were still risked meeting in college, university professors told us.

“We returned to college on September 2. They returned all three of them to school on the first day. Only one of them, Moatăr, still prohibited to meet the witnesses. Or the witnesses were everywhere, that they had to give themselves in those days, they were almost all the students, and they could say,