What role will the SRI play in combating corruption in Romania. Nicușor Dan announces “major changes” in the national strategy

The document regarding the national defense strategy of the country is almost completed and is being preparation to be presented in the CSAT, President Nicușor Dan said on Monday, in an interview with Pro TV. According to the head of state, the document will include “two major changes” for our country: corruption and hybrid war.

During the interview, President Dan referred to the need for the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) to be involved in order to combat corruption, according to the legal provisions that exist today.

Nicușor Dan said that this very important document for Romania will be adopted until November 26, when the six months have been fulfilled as the president.

“We want the phenomenon of corruption to be a concern of the Romanian Intelligence Service,” said the head of state.

“The counselor for national security, Mr. Diaconescu, has made a correspondence with all the institutions that have attributions on national security. Two correspondence files were collected and from all the opinions, which of course some of them were overlapping, elaborated a pre-document for the moment, to which we will have the CSA, and then we will have a date. When there are the six months since my investment as president, he will be respected, ”said Nicușor Dan.

According to the president, this national defense strategy of the country will include two new important directions. The first refers to the hybrid war carried out by the Russian Federation, more precisely the cyber attacks, the procedures for systemic misinformation and influence through social networks.

“There are two major changes. One, that we have to look much more attention to what is called hybrid war, that is, cyber attacks, systematic misinformation procedures, influence in the space of social networks, the Russian Federation, to say exactly with these words. So this is a part,” he said.

Nicușor Dan wants “frontal attack of the phenomenon of corruption”

The second change announced by the head of state concerns the corruption in Romania, emphasizing that it is necessary to “attack the phenomenon of corruption”, and the SRI will have to “worry” of this phenomenon.

“The second I want very much and many of the institutions have sent observations, the frontal attack of the phenomenon of corruption. With all the precautions, because we had a long discussion in society about the interference of the Romanian Intelligence Service in the process of … to tell the activity of the Prosecutor's Office. All the discussion we had in the public space. Part, we want the mechanisms in which the Romanian Intelligence Service is concerned with this phenomenon to be absolutely constitutional and the demarcation between information and parquet services to be very well done, ”the president said.

Nicușor Dan specified that the law establishes very clearly under what conditions the interceptions can be made, only on the basis of a national safety mandate issued by the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ) or other judges, within the criminal investigations. According to the head of state, the SRI should send the data to the Prosecutor's Office, both on request and on its own initiative.

“The mechanisms must be defined very well, legally I mean. In essence, the role of the information service is to produce as consistent information, so that from the moment information is transmitted to the Prosecutor's A national safety warrant that judges from the High Court emit, on the one hand.

Asked what would be the concrete contribution of the SRI, Nicușor Dan replied: “The SRI contribution is an institution that has many skills in the area of ​​information, practical skills, not attributions, that we know that it has. There are people who know very well the social, political, economic and who can (…) through their nature, can know them, The Prosecutor's Office (…) and on your own initiative, because – and I am very optimistic that this will be in the national security strategy – corruption will be a concern that can affect national security ”.

As for the hybrid war, Nicușor Dan said he wants all the institutions that already have duties to combat misinformation from the public space to coordinate better and to act much faster than they have done so far, under a new leadership, at the Supreme Council of the Country (CSAT).

At the beginning of June, the president announced that he intends to involve the SRI in the fight against tax evasion. “I said that we have a big problem related to the deficit with the great tax evasion and it is necessary for institutions, including services, to be concerned about this issue and it is a discussion whether or not it is necessary to change in this sense the national defense strategy,” the head of state said on June 3.

Involvement of services in justice

The Constitutional Court (CCR) has had a series of decisions in the last decade in which it has established the role that the secret services can play in the act of justice.

In March 2016, the RCC has removed the secret services from the criminal prosecution activity, according to Free Europe.

In 2018, another CCR decision came, which decided that the evidence obtained with the SRI technique must be physically excluded from the files.

In March 2019, the motivation of a decision of the Constitutional Court in the case of collaboration protocols with SRI from 2009 – 2016 showed that the evidence gathered with the help of SRI officers until February 2016, the date of the first CCR decision, had to be annulled, if they had been obtained on the basis of these protocols.

By another 2020 decision, the CCR said that interceptions are constitutional provided that it offers guarantees in human rights.