Lia Savonea's first public reaction after the Judicial Inspection rejected all the accusations reported in the Recorder documentary. Reply given to a judge who objected

The Judicial Section of the CSM validated on Thursday the report by which the Judicial Inspection concluded that none of the accusations from the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice” are confirmed. Present at the CSM meeting, the president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice categorized the Recorder journalists' documentary as “a manipulation that hit the foundation of the justice system” and answered one of the two judges who rejected the report that it “is very clear”.

With eight votes for and two against, the report of the Judicial Inspection drawn up following the checks carried out following the documentary “Captured Justice” was validated today by the Section for Judges of the CSM.

The Judicial Inspection, the institution that checks the activity of prosecutors and judges, is led by Roxana Petcu, a judge close to Lia Savonea. Petcu leads the Judicial Inspection from 2022, his terms being marked by open disciplinary actions against some inconvenient magistrates.

The conclusion of the report drawn up by the Judicial Inspection following the checks ordered after the publication of the documentary Captured Justice was that none of the reported aspects are confirmed.

“The exhaustive checks do not in any way confirm the assertions made in the press material according to which, at the level of the Bucharest Court of Appeal, there was a mechanism to influence the solutions handed down in corruption cases by changing the composition of the trial panels”, the Judicial Inspection stated in the report.

However, the Judicial Inspection does not analyze how the files at risk of prescription were affected by the successive changes of the boards, nor if their procrastination could have been avoided, Recorder journalists reported following the decision of the CSM.

In their opinion, the report of the Judicial Inspection validates the way of operation by which some judges were removed from files on the threshold of prescription based on arguments such as “balancing the volume of activity” or “the need to integrate a newly arrived judge”.

Two judges dissented

Two of the CSM judges who opposed the conclusions of the Judicial Inspection, Grațiela Milu and Narcis Erculescu, stated in the plenary session that the report contains errors and is not signed by the judges who drew it up.

“It is necessary to complete this report”, said judge Milu.

The magistrate was immediately confronted by the president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, Lia Savonea, who pointed out, unequivocally: “The report is very clear, the conclusions are clear”.

Lia Savonea, legal member of the CSM, given her capacity as president of the ICCJ, had a clear first public reaction to the documentary “Captured Justice”.

Lia Savonea: “A manipulation that hit hard on the confidence of the justice act”

Fully appropriating the conclusions of the Judicial Inspection, Lia Savonea defended the leadership of the Bucharest Court of Appeal, arguing that the panel changes were determined by objective reasons as a result of the mobility of human resources.

The president of the supreme court continued her speech by directly accusing the Recorder documentary of manipulation.

“To select four files out of tens of thousands as we see, because at 2,061 panels if we take an average of 30-40 files per meeting, although there are also 80, we have tens of thousands of files. To select four files and present them as a phenomenon I think is not an analysis, it is an interested selection. This report also showed what it was able to show. What it cannot ascertain, explain and it will have to remain an issue for us is who does it belong to, who did he use, why did all these things happen and especially how did two colleagues get involved in this manipulation,” she said.

“Using half-truths and adding all kinds of suspicions, you obtained a manipulation that hit hard at the confidence of the justice act at the highest court in Romania, but unfortunately it hit at the foundation of our justice system. It's a shame and here I think we have to think: what can we do to prevent such situations that we witnessed in the last two months and which were not at all beneficial for us. From my point of view, things are very clear, the conclusions They are clear to the Judicial Inspection”, continued Lia Savonea, according to the recording of the meeting published by the CSM.

Judge Laurențiu Beșu, one of the magistrates who appeared in the “Captured Justice” documentary, told Recorder journalists that he was never heard by the Judicial Inspection during the procedure that was the basis of the report. The magistrate announced that he is considering legally contesting the decision of the CSM that validated the report of the Judicial Inspection.

The documentary Captured Justice

On December 9, Recorder broadcast an investigation 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 management of the courts, including the change in the moment when the sentence was to be pronounced.