How Sorin Oprescu tried to escape the 10 -year prison for corruption. “A punishment harsher than those for rape or robbery” / connection with the judge of Elena Udrea

Sorin Oprescu will be heard on Monday before a Greek prosecutor on his extradition in Romania. So far, eight extraordinary remedies has formulated Sorin Oprescu against the sentence of 2022 by which he was sentenced to 10 years and 8 months in prison, all rejected by the Romanian Justice.

• Sorin Oprescu was detained on Saturday by the Greek authorities, where he fled before the definitive sentence of 2022.
• The former mayor of the capital was also detained by the Greek authorities and in 2022, but then they refused the extradition by invoking Sorin Oprescu's health and the difficult conditions of detention in Romania.

Found guilty for setting up an organized criminal group, bribery and abuse of office, the former mayor of the Capital, Sorin Oprescu, was definitively convicted by the Bucharest Court of Appeal on May 13, 2022.

The court doubled the punishment that Oprescu had received at the substantive court. The Bucharest Court sentenced him on May 13, 2019 to 5 years and 4 months imprisonment.

Sentence 2 to 1

The decision of the Bucharest Court of Appeal was made in complete divergence, judges Daniela Panioglu and Claudia Jderu being the ones who decided to increase the punishment, while Judge Mihai Valentin appreciated that Sorin Oprescu's acquittal is required for two of the crimes. His minority opinion did not matter.

One month after pronouncing the sentence of the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Sorin Oprescu's lawyers triggered a series of extraordinary remedies in trying to save the former general mayor.

The 8 actions

From June 2022 to June 2025, Sorin Oprescu challenged the definitive conviction eight times, according to the hotnews centralized data on the court portal.

The former mayor of Bucharest formulated:

• Appeal on execution – June 14, 2022, rejected on August 4, 2022
• Appeal in cancellation- June 15, 2022, rejected October 21, 2022
• Appeal in Cassation- June 15, 2022, rejected February 2, 2023
• Appeal to execution- September 30, 2022, rejected 15 February 2023
• Appeal to execution- November 14, 2022, rejected March 29, 2023
• Appeal in cancellation- November 17, 2022, rejected January 20, 2023
• Appeal in cancellation 24 February 2025, rejected 15 May 2025
• Appeal intervention of a new criminal law- April 22, 2025, rejected in the first instance June 5

The first criticisms: “punishment compatible with a murder offense”

One month after the final conviction, on June 14, 2022, Oprescu filed the first appeal to the Bucharest Court, requesting the annulment of the European arrest warrant issued then on his behalf, respectively the recovery of the punishment.

The lawyers invoked that the former mayor was sentenced “with the violation of art.

The defenders of the former general mayor cataloged as an exaggerated the punishment in relation to the deeds retained. They pointed out that when issuing the mandate of European arrest, the judge must apply the right of the European Union, in particular “the right to the proportionality of the harsh penalty with the severity of the crime”.

“In this case, it is disproportionate, aberrant, absurd”

“In this case, it is disproportionate, aberrant, absurd, that, according to the substantial Romanian criminal law applied by the Romanian criminal court, for a single fact of receiving the amount of 25,000 euros, preceded by an accession to a group organized 2 years before and immediately followed by the payment of a debt, as well as for another fact, for another fact, For 10 years and 8 months ”, invoked Sorin Oprescu's lawyer to judge the first challenge for execution, according to the document consulted by Hotnews.

The maximum punishment that Oprescu could receive: 23 years in prison

In support of the plea, the lawyer emphasized that the punishment received by Sorin Oprescu “is compatible with a crime of murder or piracy, but exceeds as a level of harsh the punishment that can be applied for an offense such as slavery, human trafficking, torture, rape, robbery, transmission of the HIV”.

Two months away after the appeal was submitted, the Bucharest Court rejected Oprescu's request, as unfounded.

The court emphasized that the court of appeal had correctly individualized the punishments and that in fact the resulting conviction was oriented towards the minimum limit, the maximum punishment that Sorin Oprescu risks for the three facts being 23 years, a month and ten days, the judge of the Bucharest Court held in the reasoning of the decision by which he rejected the first appeal.

Second Appeal: Dissatisfaction with the composition of the trial court

Also in June 2022, Oprescu exercised another extraordinary way of appeal in annulment- at the Bucharest Court of Appeal. This time, the main criticisms of the lawyers were related to the two judges who pronounced the final sentence.

In support of the appeal, Oprescu cried, through the lawyers, that the president of the court postponed the finding of the divergence with the full colleague, to take the distribution of a favorable judge, according to the decision of the Bucharest Court of Appeal of October 21, 2022.

Claimed that the judge who condemned Elena Udrea was expected to be expected

According to the regulation of the SCM, when the members of a full judgment have different opinions, they are completely formed. Basically, the judge who ensures permanence at the time of finding the procedural incident is distributed.

Sorin Oprescu's lawyers invoked that Judge Daniela Panioglu has postponed this moment, to completely co -opted Claudia Jderu. The latter sentenced Elena Udrea to 8 years in prison.

“The time to detect the divergence was equivalent to a directed distribution of the case, in the sense that a favorable judge entered the president of the Complete.

Rejections

And the second appeal was rejected by the judges. In the reasoning, the magistrates showed that the possible non-observance of the principle of random distribution does not represent a basis for admitting an appeal in annulment, being able to attract only the disciplinary liability of the magistrates if the regulation was violated.

“The appointment of judges who will compose a complete has an administrative character and can not constitute a reason for the cancellation in the absence of other elements”, argues the Bucharest Court of Appeal to reject the second appeal.

One by one, all the other six extraordinary remedies, exercised by Sorin Oprescu against the sentence of 10 years and 8 months imprisonment had the same result: they were rejected as unfounded.

Last attack: Call CCR decisions

The last appeal made by Sorin Oprescu was filed with the Bucharest Court on April 22 this year.

In support of it, Oprescu's lawyers asked the judges to find that a more favorable criminal law had intervened with the regulations of the Constitutional Court regarding the offense of abuse in service, respectively money laundering.

Says he violated an internal regulation, not a law

Oprescu requested the admission of the appeal and the re -examination of the file, motivating that the act of abuse in the service retained in his task does not fall to the definition established by the RCC, being a violation of the internal regulation of the City Hall and not of an organization as the crime was redefined.

On June 5, the Bucharest Court also rejected this appeal.

“The court finds that the convicted person, starting from the real circumstance of the entry into force of Law no. 200/2023, follows the discussion in question of some broadly debated aspects and unraveled by the substantive courts, approved in this procedure under the conditions in which the constitutive content of the offense provided by art. Substantial as a result of the entry into force of the new law ”, the judges held in the judgment given on June 5.

Oprescu challenged the decision. A definitive verdict is expected on Wednesday at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, where the pronouncement was postponed successively on August 26.

accusations

The former mayor of the capital Sorin Oprescu was definitively sentenced, on May 13, 2022, to 10 years and 8 months in prison, in a file in which he is accused of several corruption facts, after receiving 25,000 euros at his home in Ciolpani, from Bogdan Popa, former head of the Cemetery Administration.

Oprescu was accused of constituted an organized criminal group, to which the other defendants from the file, and aimed at committing corruption offenses (giving and taking bribes, from the budget of Bucharest).

Because it was not found by the policemen who went to execute the mandate, Sorin Oprescu was given international prosecution, being detained in Greece on May 17.

Arrested provisionally by the Greek authorities, Oprescu was issued on bail on May 31, 2022. The Athens Court of Appeal rejected Romania's request for extradition, invoking the health status of the former mayor and the conditions of the Romanian penitentiary system.

Awaiting extradition

The Minister of Justice, Radu Marinescu, spoke, on Sunday evening, at Digi24, about what was followed after the detention of Sorin Oprescu in Greece. The minister said that at this moment there should be no impediment regarding the extradition of Sorin Oprescu in Greece.

Sorin Oprescu will be heard on Monday before a Greek prosecutor on his extradition in Romania. The reason is that the Greek authorities received new information from the Romanian justice regarding the conditions of detention in the Romanian penitentiaries.