What politicians from various parties say about the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice”

HotNews asked several politicians, from all parliamentary political parties, whether they had seen the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice” or excerpts from it.

The Recorder documentary is an investigation about the state of justice in Romania, the phenomenon of prescriptions, but also the effects of the strictly centralized and discretionary power exercised at the level of “some magistrates who coexist with politicians”. The military prosecutor Liviu Lascu, Crin Bologa, the former chief prosecutor of the DNA between the Laura Codruța Kovesi and Marius Voineag periods, as well as a prosecutor from the DNA and a judge from the Court of Appeal, who spoke anonymously, were interviewed.

Claudiu Sandu, representative of the prosecutors in the CSM, said that the excessively formal interpretation of the law led to the annulment of the evidence in 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.”

HotNews asked several politicians if they had seen it in full or excerpts from it. Those who said they saw him were:

Violeta Alexandru (USR): “I have moments when I wonder that we function as a country”

Violeta Alexandru is the senator elected on the USR lists. She coordinates the accession process of Romania to the OECD on the part of the Parliament. In the Orban Government, Alexandru was the Minister of Labor.

“I saw it late last night, as much as I could after the whole day, and I decided to watch it again, maybe I can draw some conclusions. I also made a small post, I put my point of view on Facebook”, said Violeta Alexandru.

In the mentioned post, the senator talks about the lust for control that can be found everywhere, not just in the judiciary:

“It doesn't matter if, in the end, you end up with an empty shell. Here we are now. Of course, the social impact of the field (ed. of justice) is crucial. Not that many of those who wonder wouldn't fall into the temptation to do the same, if they had the levers. Few resist. The environment in which you were trained/work daily matters. It's terribly demotivating, things end up being done with minimal involvement, at the level of damage. If you don't think you can develop professionally in a healthy environment, you don't push yourself anymore, you only check what is strictly necessary. I have moments when I wonder that we still function as a country”.

Petrișor Peiu (AUR): “I expected there to be such cases”

The president of the National Management Council (CNC) of the AUR and also the senator Petrișor Peiu said that he saw passages, he did not manage to see the Recorder documentary in its entirety, but that he read the news that summarizes it. Here, HotNews has summarized passages from the film.

“Honestly, it's no surprise, I mean I expected there to be such cases. Intuitively, we all felt that something was happening with the files that reach the statute of limitations almost predictably,” Petrișor Peiu said.

“It is, without a doubt, directing the way in which the criminal investigation and the trial phase are carried out, because I find, for example, that many of those who visibly leave traces in their activity are never asked by the prosecutors why this happens. And the few who are asked are asked at a rate that leads to the reaching of the statute of limitations,” said Peiu.

“The same thing happens with the deadlines that last in court, we have all seen that the files last for several years, then there is the appeal or appeal phase which also lasts for several years and obviously the statute of limitations is reached”, believes the AUR leader.

He says that although there is no evidence that anyone is receiving money or other advantages to act in a certain way as a magistrate, things are happening in a coordinated manner.

“I have not seen in this investigation, and I think it is very difficult to identify, evidence that such matters are coordinated or rewarded in some way, but obviously this happens on a schedule. If you or I go tomorrow and steal three chickens, certainly the criminal phase is going to be carried out at a very fast pace and in a few months you find yourself in prison. and judgment is carried out as slowly as possible and with a lot of expertise, procedural mistakes, so as to reach the statute of limitations”, explained Peiu.

“The documentary shows some things that we intuitively felt, we can't prove them, probably even the people at Recorder, who made the documentary can't produce evidence, but it's a highly visible statistical connection,” said Peiu.

Victoria Stoiciu (PSD): “I woke up at night and it seemed outrageous”

Victoria Stoiciu is a PSD senator and one of the names co-opted into the party in recent years. For 15 years he worked at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German social democratic foundation, and in the past he wrote for various publications such as CriticAtac, Dilema veche, Contributors or Libertatea.

“I didn't see it all. I only saw half of it, last night. I didn't finish it, so I don't have an opinion yet. As far as I saw it, I found it outrageous. But as far as I saw it, somehow I knew some things, that it was still reported. Much of the information is known, but the way they put it in a history, in a story, is new.”

She says she can't have a complete, overall opinion without having seen the entire documentary

“At least the part with the prosecutors, that I got to Vanghelie, that's where I got to the judges, but the part with Voineag, with the prosecutors, seemed absolutely revolting to me. I woke up at night and it seemed revolting. There was a lot of talk today about Radu Marinescu, but the craftsman is Cătălin Predoiu.”

Alexandru Muraru (PNL): “Either you enter the logic of caste, or you are pushed out”

Deputy Alexandru Muraru and PNL Iasi leader Alexandru Muraru says that he saw the Recorder documentary which “appears in a social context animated by the reforms that the Bolojan government wants to make in justice and the judicial system's resistance to change”.

He says he appreciates “the courage of some magistrates to speak freely about what many sensed was happening behind the scenes of the justice system's decision-making.”

“These integrity whistleblowers show that there are still people of good faith, magistrates who want to do justice in this country, that there is a fear of harsh and undeserved repercussions, that you are either part of the system and complicit in it, or you are pushed out, without any explanation. You either enter the caste logic, or you are pushed out,” Muraru told HotNews.

The PNL deputy says that the Recorder investigation “achieved what seemed impossible”: “Namely to penetrate today into the bowels of this monolith of power that has developed almost perfect antibodies to any threat to the imposed order.”

Muraru believes the magistrates who spoke to Recorder journalists “will be hunted down, isolated, intimidated and professionally annihilated” because “the system has much faster reflexes than reformers”.

“If the magistrates of good faith do not stand in solidarity now, in this unique moment of maximum public visibility, the pressure will be directed exclusively against them, and those who broke their silence today will pay a disproportionate price,” the PNL deputy also conveyed, among other things.

HotNews contacted several politicians from all parliamentary parties, but we have included in the article only those who answered the newsroom's calls and said they had watched the Recorder documentary.