The judge who appears in the Recorder documentary warns of a conflict of interests, even on the day of the discussions in Cotroceni: “They supported the harmful changes to the justice laws and now they support the status quo”
Former judge Andrea Chiș, former member of the CSM, draws attention to the existence of a conflict of interests, in the context of Monday's discussions at the Cotroceni Palace between the president Nicușor Dan and the magistrates who signed up for them, following the public debate generated by the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice”.
“The presidents of some professional associations who are meeting with the President today and will most likely go to the commission that will propose the amendment of some laws set up by the Prime Minister are presidents or vice-presidents of appeal courts (one recently delegated to the position of president, although he had already had two mandates and can no longer hold this position – Decision 2756/December 11, 2025 of the Section for Judges)”, writes the former judge, in a message posted on her Facebook page Monday morning.
“They supported the harmful changes to the justice laws of 2018 and 2022 that brought us to the current situation. Now they support the status quo, that is, the preservation of the pyramid structure, based on the extended powers of court presidents,” claims Andrea Chiș.
The former judge believes that, in this context, a “legitimate question” must be asked.
“Which role are these presidents talking about? That of a court president/vice president, who wants to preserve their rights, or that of a professional association president who should have an interest in deconstructing the power pyramid?”, she mentions.
Also, Chiș says that “an express conflict of interest between these positions” must be urgently regulated, by the president of the court and the president of the professional association of magistrates.
“The legislator has no way to imagine all the possible conflicts of interest, therefore, they are a matter of contextual appreciation, a matter of values and common sense. It seems that an express regulation is required, because otherwise, as you can see, if the law does not expressly prohibit it, some may say that it allows it,” explains the former judge.
“As long as they accumulate these roles, any proposal from their side must be looked at from both perspectives and taken into account or not, depending on this overall picture as far as they are concerned,” concluded Andrea Chiș.
The former judge is also one of the magistrates featured in the Recorder documentary.
On Monday, at 10:00 a.m., the head of state began discussions with the magistrates who signed up to participate in the consultations with him, after the publication of the “Captured Justice” investigation.
The meeting between the president and representatives of judges and prosecutors takes place in Cotroceni, and Nicușor Dan announced that it will be one “without a time limit”.
LIVE VIDEO Nicușor Dan, now face to face with the magistrates for the first time since the start of the scandal after the documentary “Captured Justice”
On Sunday, the president stated that many magistrates are afraid to go to Cotroceni, because there were messages of “influence, intimidation”.
“There are about 20 magistrates in their individual names and about 20 magistrates in the name of associations of magistrates. And all kinds of things happened in these days that my colleagues who were in contact with these magistrates perceived. First of all, that, unusually, meetings were organized in certain institutions on Monday, December 22. There were messages of influence, intimidation,” said the head of state, in a statement press.
He specified that many magistrates requested them to meet, but not on December 22, “precisely because there is a fear that participation in such a meeting would have repercussions”: “And I even came up with inappropriate proposals, to come in turn, to sit in different rooms around here, so as not to cross each other, or even to have my colleagues pick them up from gas stations in Bucharest so that they would not be seen entering the Palace Cotroceni”.
The president's initiative to call the magistrates to Cotroceni came after the publication of the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice” – an investigation about the state of justice in Romania, the phenomenon of prescriptions, but also the effects of the concentration of power at the level of “some magistrates who cohabit with politicians”. In the film, several prosecutors and judges, some with their identities protected, but others assumed, such as former head of DNA Crin Bologa, military prosecutor Liviu Lascu or judge Andrea Chiș, described the backstage of the justice system.
The documentary was contested from the top of the Superior Council of the Magistracy, the supreme court, led by Lia Savonea, and the Bucharest Court of Appeal, whose management convened an “extraordinary press conference”, the first in the institution's history.
