A former judge excluded by the CSM, direct accusations of judicial corruption. “The pyramidal structure on top of which lies Lia Savonea”

A former judge made serious accusations on Wednesday evening at Euronews Romania, after the Recorder revelations about the justice system in our country.

“I don't know if anything works in Romania better than corruption in the judiciary. Take all hope, abandon it all, because it's a controlled system,” said Daniela Panioglu, whose trial cases were brought to attention in the documentary by investigative journalists from Recorder.

“The situation is very serious, it was passed over in silence, it suffered in silence for so long, but I think that is no longer possible in Romanian society. Justice is dysfunctional,” she added.

The former magistrate also indicated one of the people she considers guilty for the state of the judicial system in Romania.

“It is a pyramid structure at the top of which is a leader who, extremely meticulously and over time, managed to capture the entire judicial system. His name is Savonea Lia. He was the de facto leader of that group that was also talked about in the material (Recorder investigation, no). This leader placed, created and carefully and meticulously woven his whole network, placed certain chief justices. In their mandate, these chief justices intervened as a pressure on judges”, said Daniela Panioglu, on the set of Euronews Romania.

She also said that “the disciplinary investigation of a judge is a kind of inquisition.”

“Don't think I'm exaggerating. Within six months, there was a flurry of six disciplinary actions. Two teams of two inspectors came every week,” she added.

She also gave details about the manner in which she was removed from a corruption case.

“I had the bankers' file, I heard a lot of witnesses, I had changed the classification and stayed with him in the judgment. It was a file of 405 follow-up volumes. The damage was about 80 million euros. The idea is that they blew me away, in the conditions that I had taken out the file and was going to redact it and I was within the limitation period and I was as careful as possible. That's what I do, I intervene in the face and change the judges until the statute of limitations. This should be a serious criminal investigation for the crime of abuse of office,” the former judge argued.

In this context, Daniela Panioglu also demanded the resignation of the current Minister of Justice, Radu Marinescu: “he has to go, he has nothing left to do”.

Panioglu, one of the judges in Lucian Duță's case

Daniela Panioglu together with Alina Nadia Guluțanu judged at the Bucharest Court of Appeal the case of the former head of the Health Insurance House Lucian Duță, accused of taking a bribe of 6.3 million euros, completed with a 6-year prison sentence.

The two judges were excluded by the CSM from the magistracy in December 2022, on the grounds that they revealed in the justification for sentencing the fact that two prosecutors from the Prosecutor's Office of the Constanța Court of Appeal tried to help Lucian Duță escape the charges, according to Agerpres.

Lia Savonea was one of the members of the CSM who voted, then, “for” the exclusion of the two judges from the magistracy.

Former judge Andrea Chiș, former member of the CSM, who appears in the Recorder's investigation, opposed the sanctioning of the two magistrates.

And at that time, in 2022, Panioglu and Guluțanu accused the corruption of the justice system and talked about pressure from the leadership of the Bucharest Court of Appeal on them to give favorable solutions to some defendants, according to Europa Liberă.

Later, the Supreme Court annulled the CSM's exclusion decision.

On Wednesday, the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ) granted the former head of the CNAS an extraordinary appeal and decided to cancel the conviction given by the two judges in 2022.

The High Court of Cassation and Justice, led by Lia Savonea, has issued several favorable decisions in recent months for famous defendants in corruption cases: the former Minister of Health Nicolae Bănicioiu was definitively acquitted in the case in which he was accused of receiving a bribe of 800,000 euros, the former Minister of Finance Sebastian Vlădescu and the former president of Eximbank Mircea Costea obtained annulment of convictions and release from prison also following an extraordinary appeal.

The businessman Remus Truică and the former bishop of Huși, Corneliu Onilă, also obtained at the ICCJ the admission in principle of appeals in cassation against the final convictions.

Lia Savonea denounces a “delegitimization campaign”

“I do not intend to legitimize an area that operates deliberately in the register of ambiguity and insinuation, including when such positions come from within the system,” the head of the ICCJ told HotNews on Wednesday, after the documentary “Captured Justice”.

Asked by HotNews if he would resign as head of the supreme court following the serious allegations against him, Savonea said: “Your question does not require an answer. It is clear. However, I am answering you. Out of respect for the media, as a matter of principle.”

The head of the ICCJ accused “a persistent campaign to delegitimize some leaders of justice”: “The situation of the judicial system is serious and cannot be ignored. I am carefully analyzing what steps are necessary. We are, unfortunately, facing a persistent campaign to delegitimize some leaders of justice, built on anonymous statements and accusations presented as truths, without being supported by verified facts.”

“The context is more complex than it seems at first glance, which is why I have the obligation to thoroughly document all aspects before having a public reaction. Given the position I occupy, I cannot allow hasty interventions or interventions that could be interpreted”, declared Lia Savonea.

“At the same time, it is clear that this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue without clarifying all imputations. I do not intend to legitimize an area that deliberately operates in the register of ambiguity and innuendo, including when such positions come from within the system,” she added.

The Recorder revelations and the reaction of the Minister of Justice

The documentary “Captured Justice” was published on Tuesday evening by the Recorder on its own YouTube channel and by the time of publication of this article it had more than 1.6 million views.

The documentary is an investigation about the state of justice in Romania, the phenomenon of statutes of limitations, but also the effects of the centralization of power at the level of “some magistrates who coexist 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.

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.” The massacre of the idea of ​​justice, said Sandu, demobilizes the magistrates and disarms the citizens.

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.

In a first reaction, the Minister of Justice, Radu Marinescu, stated that it must be seen if there are “concrete aspects”, he stressed 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.

Later on Wednesday, Radu Marinescu stated, for HotNews, regarding the observations of President Nicușor Dan related to the “lack of will” of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) to solve the problems of the judicial system, that the MoJ cannot intervene in the judicial act, but has the will to participate in the efforts to correct these problems.

“The president has every right to react to the concerns of society and the legitimate expectations of citizens,” Radu Marinescu told HotNews.

“The Ministry of Justice acts within the limits of its competences and cannot interfere in the act of justice, the correct and expeditious application of the law being the attribute of the magistrates, in the context of the independence of the judiciary, who are also responsible for how they perform their duties. The Ministry of Justice is aware that there are problems in the judicial system and has the will to participate, within the limits of legal competences and the Constitution, in joint institutional actions to correct them,” Radu Marinescu said.

Nicușor Dan's message

“The easiest thing is to revolt, once again, and throw generic blame”, reacted Nicușor Dan, in a message published on X announcing that he had seen the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice”. “It's even harder to solve the problems in the judiciary,” the president said.

“I don't want to excuse politics in any way. The fact that the anti-corruption fight has been dramatically reduced has political influence. The appointments of the chief prosecutors were political. Society has been talking about problems in the judiciary for a long time without seeing, at the level of the Ministry of Justice, the will to really get into them,” Nicușor Dan added in the post.