The Minister of Digitization, after the criminal complaint filed by the new head of ADR: “The faucet is turned off”
Interim Minister Irineu Darău declared, on Wednesday evening, that the complaint filed by the new president of the Authority for the Digitization of Romania (ADR), Cătălin Giulescu, against the former head of the institution, Dragoș Vlad, shows that “no one is above the law when it comes to public money and the digital infrastructure of the Romanian state”.
The criminal complaint follows the decision of May 15, when Giulescu ordered the cancellation of the public procurement procedure initiated in the context of the implementation of the “National Interoperability Platform” (PNI) project.
A day ago, Dragoș Vlad had in turn filed a criminal complaint, against interim deputy prime minister Oana Gheorghiu and minister Darău, whom he accuses of repeated pressures for violating the law on public procurement.
Darău claims that the National Interoperability Platform (PNI), the IT platform that should have ensured the automatic exchange of data between public institutions, “risks becoming yet another huge contract pushed forward with serious problems of legality and opportunity”.
“When you stop illegal and inopportune tenders, when you put a magnifying glass on contracts with dedication and when you dig into the history of the Authority for Digitization of Romania, the effect is clear: the smart guys from digitization are in crisis and they come out to attack, because they are unplugged – and they finally start to lose control”, he declared, on Wednesday evening, in a post on Facebook.
The minister said that “we would have reaped the poisoned fruits in a few years, as unfortunately we have become accustomed”.
“And again we would have pretended to be doing… the state remaining undigitalized – despite the huge sums spent. For years, digitization was used as a source of contracts for politically connected networks. That's why the network built by Ghiță and the old system is shaking now – because the faucet is being turned off,” added Irineu Darău.
The procedure for the PNI “will be properly rethought”
The official claims that “the era of shadow-controlled digitization ends here” and that the procedure for the PNI “will be properly rethought, and the procedures will be resumed with 100% compliance with the law and with the optimal use of public money.”
“I will go to the end and nothing will intimidate me, because captured digitalization means captured state. It means lost lives and wasted time. It means dissatisfaction and mockery of citizens. Before the digital transformation that we need like air to make life easier for people and companies, we need to remove Ghita's people and other smart guys of digitalization from the buttons”, the minister also stated interim of Digitization.
