The Minister of Justice, Radu Marinescu, said on Wednesday, when asked about the investigative material “Captured Justice” produced by the Recorder, that it must be seen if there are “concrete aspects”, emphasizing that the disciplinary procedures in the judiciary are the responsibility of the Superior Council of the Magistrate and the Judicial Inspection. “If there are concrete issues, surely they must be investigated,” Marinescu said after being asked insistently in an intervention on Digi24 if he would take measures and if he would ask for an investigation.
“I confess to you that I only managed to see a few fragments. I am at a meeting of the Ministers of Justice on very important issues in Strasbourg, so when preparing this meeting I only managed to go through it fragmentarily”, said Radu Marinescu, on Digi24, when asked how he comments on the Recorder investigation.
“It is a journalistic investigation, I have not been able to go through it in its entirety,” continued the Minister of Justice, who went on to say that he could answer “if you ask me specific questions.”
In this context, Radu Marinescu was asked to comment on the procrastination of some files, the cases of some magistrates moved to the courts which thus led to the procrastination of some investigations.
“Regarding the duration of the trials, the reasonable duration, I would like to remind you that recently there was an assessment made by the European Commission, there was also a decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which set certain benchmarks regarding the progress made by Romania regarding the duration of cases. In the EU there is a general concern in many countries regarding the very long duration of the procedures, so if we talk about the reasonable duration of the process, if we talk about the disciplinary processes against certain magistrates, these are the responsibility of the CSM and the Judicial Inspection…”, said Radu Marinescu.
“I can only give these benchmarks that are from evaluations from the European Commission, the Court for Human Rights (…) Specific issues must be analyzed punctually and concretely, which specific causes were procrastination if there were, for what reasons. A concrete analysis must be made for each individual case and seen if it is a matter that is objectively generated by the complexity of the case, the number of people involved or it is a culpable procrastination and then, of course, if someone culpably procrastinates, they should answer for it”. said Radu Marinescu.
Also, Radu Marinescu was asked to say whether he will take measures or whether he will check the cases given as an example in the Recorder investigation.
“The media has the freedom to express points of view and also has the responsibility to reflect certain aspects that must attract attention, but the taking of measures must be done institutionally, correctly, by those who have this responsibility. I do not have this responsibility regarding the career of the magistrates. This responsibility has regarding the component of disciplinary responsibility the Judicial Inspection and the CSM, if someone procrastinates culpably, that is, guilty, my answer is that he must to answer”, said Marinescu.
In a Recorder investigation, several judges and prosecutors, former heads of the DNA and the SCM, describe how cases are prolonged to escape the accused
Recorder published an investigation on Tuesday evening about the state of justice in Romania, the phenomenon of prescriptions, but also the effects of the centralization of power at the level of “some magistrates who cohabit with politicians”.
In the Recorder documentary, the military prosecutor Liviu Lascu, Crin Bologa, the former chief prosecutor of the DNA between the periods of Laura Codruța Kovesi and Marius Voineag, but also a prosecutor from the DNA and a judge from the Court of Appeal, who spoke anonymously, were interviewed.
The Recorder's investigation highlighted concrete cases in which defendants politically connected or very powerful in terms of business, such as Marian Vanghelie, Cristian Burci or Puiu Popoviciu, benefited from trials extended until the statute of limitations. The prolongation of the trials was achieved by changing the court panels by the court management, including the change in the moment when the sentence was to be pronounced.
Claudiu Sandu, representative of the prosecutors in the CSM, said that the excessively formal interpretation of the law led to the annulment of evidence from the file “for anything”, for what he metaphorized as “a comma”.
“We ended up reinventing the law,” said Sandu, who said that “I don't remember a big guilty verdict lately.” The massacre of the idea of justice, said Sandu, demobilizes the magistrates and disarms the citizens.
