The Minister of Justice, Radu Marinescu, says on Tuesday morning, in an interview with RFI, that he asks the magistrates to have the courage “to call things as they are” and to bring evidence, in the context of the judicial scandal caused by the Recorder documentary.
Radu Marinescu claims that he has not received any notification related to the problems in the judiciary reported in the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice”.
“The issues raised in the Recorder material, about specific abuses of certain judges or prosecutors, were obviously not discussed at the time when we constituted that coalition. At the Ministry of Justice, since I have been a minister, I have never received any notification of any magistrate, which brought to my attention that he was the victim of abuses, persecutions, because he thinks differently or because he has a certain vision or because he exposes dysfunctionalities in the system. We did not receive not even notifications from the magistrates to tell me about dysfunctions, so that I have such concrete benchmarks”, declared Radu Marinescu.
To the filmmaker's remark that the magistrates were afraid of reprisals, the Minister of Justice replied: “That's right, they have been talking about abuses in the Judiciary for a long time and they talked about abuses during the period when the leadership of the Judiciary was not ensured by the current people who are… I would like to put an end to all the abuses. I don't know if they were afraid or not.”
“My direct message to the magistrates is…”
At the same time, Radu Marinescu told the magistrates that it is not “enough to accuse” and asked them to come with “all the concrete elements”.
“My direct message to the magistrates is: if you have immovability, according to the law, if you have the courage to judge difficult cases, important cases, and you must have it, because that is the purpose of the magistrate in the rule of law, you certainly must also have the courage to call things by their names, come with the concrete elements, because the magistrates and lawyers know very well that it is not enough to accuse, but you must also prove, come with concrete elements, I ask them to come with all the concrete elements, in order to be able to know them and solve everything that needs to be solved in the Justice”, Radu Marinescu also transmitted.
Asked where the magistrates should come with these complaints, Radu Marinescu answered:
“I speak for the Ministry of Justice. Magistrates who have knowledge of crimes should address the criminal investigation bodies. Magistrates who have knowledge of abuses should report them and can report them including publicly, obviously, they should report them to the bodies that investigate these disciplinary matters and that is the Judicial Inspection, an independent body, according to the law and to us, as the Ministry of Justice, if they want to bring us to our attention, so that we can then be a voice that supports the fight against some such abuses,” said the Minister of Justice.
Revelations from the Recorder documentary
In the documentary broadcast on Tuesday evening, December 9, by Recorder, entitled “Captured Justice”, it talks 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, judge Laurențiu Beșu, but also a prosecutor from the DNA and a judge from the Court of Appeal, who spoke anonymously, were interviewed.
After the publication of the documentary, thousands of people protested, for five consecutive days, in Bucharest and in other cities in the country. The protesters also demanded the dismissal of the president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Lia Savonea, the dismissal of the leadership of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate and the dismissal of the Minister of Justice, Cătălin Predoiu.
President Nicușor Dan invited the magistrates who want to report integrity problems in the justice system to a discussion “without time limit” at the Cotroceni Palace, on December 22.
