No judge wants to judge the appeal of the lawyer who accuses the manipulation of the file distribution system at the Constanța Court

A judge from the Constanța Court refused on Tuesday to judge the civil case in which a lawyer reported the violation of the rules regarding the random assignment of a criminal file, about which HotNews.ro reported. So far, nine other magistrates have declined to hear the case.

• The lawyer asked for the transfer of the criminal file, the distribution of which she disputes, but the judge of the case, who is the vice-president of the Constanța Court, did not wait for the Court of Appeal's verdict. He finished the trial in the preliminary chamber today, the day before.

None of the seven judges of the Administrative Litigation Section of the Constanța Court wanted to judge the litigation opened by the lawyer Sandra Grădinaru against the court, formulating, one by one, applications for abstention.

The file was moved to the Second Civil Section, where three more abstentions from the trial were recorded. The last one was admitted today.

The friendship with the president of the court was also invoked

The ten judges filed requests to abstain, citing “the effective respect of the plaintiff's right to a fair trial, which involves access to an independent and impartial court,” according to the conclusion, consulted by HotNews.

In support of the requests for abstention, the magistrates of the two sections showed that they are employees of the court, respectively they have friendly relations with the president of the court and the president of the civil section.

“This factual situation may reasonably raise doubts about the impartiality of the randomly assigned judge to adjudicate the dispute from the perspective of the objective test,” the court concluded.

What was the Court sued for

Lawyer Sandra Grădinaru is the defender of one of the defendants in the case in which the former head of the Constanța South Border Customs Bureau, Cadîr Sunai, and seven other customs inspectors were sent to court for acts of corruption.

This is defended by one of the accused inspectors.

The lawyer reported, last month, the violation of the rules regarding random assignment. Three of the five parameters on the basis of which the degree of complexity of the case is calculated were filled with erroneous figures, according to official documents consulted by HotNews.

Grădinaru asked the court management to resume the computerized distribution, by entering the correct numbers. The management of the court objected.

The lawyer sued the Court requesting the annulment of the decisions of the president of the court and the president of the civil section, by which the redistribution of the criminal file was refused.

The decision from the criminal file, before the displacement trial

Considering the civil litigation opened against the court, the lawyer Grădinaru requested the Constanța Court of Appeal to transfer the criminal file, showing that the impartiality of the judges of the Constanța Court is affected in the given context.

The relocation request will be heard on Wednesday, April 15.

The head of the panel that judges the case of the customs officers, the vice-president of the Constanța Court, Mihaela Voichița Nițeanu, did not wait for a decision of the Constanța Court of Appeal, according to lawyer Grădinaru.

The judge set a deadline for conclusions just one day before the trial of the relocation request.

Three of the five allocation parameters violated

The ECRIS application automatically calculates the complexity of a file, in relation to the notes entered by the registrar, at the time of the file registration, respectively: the object/objects of the file, the number of parts, the number of volumes of the court file, and after the registration of the file, the number of volumes of the criminal investigation file.

In the present case, three of the five parameters were entered incorrectly, according to the file sheet consulted by HotNews:

• The main subject of the file – corruption offenses – was also resumed as a secondary subject.
• The number of occurrences of the secondary object “constitution of an organized criminal group” was mentioned 7, given that the offense was held against three of the defendants, and the figure 3 was mentioned for “destruction of evidence or documents”, although only one defendant is tried for this act.
• The figure 1 is mentioned for the number of volumes, although the file consists of 76 volumes.

In a response to HotNews' request, the Court of Constanța specified that the indicated file “was distributed in compliance with all legal and regulatory provisions, and the procedural rights of the defendants were and are respected”.

The court's management admitted that it was found when the secondary items were introduced, but that this “was not likely to alter the random allocation”.