The head of the Romanian Army, accused of illegal employment. What has the Justice done with other accusations of corruption in the state / Recent sentence in the “Waitress from Romanian Waters” file

The Chief of the Defense Staff, General Vlad Gheorghiță, was charged on Tuesday by the Military Section of the DNA for complicity in the usurpation of office. In the first reaction, he maintained his innocence and said that the very moment chosen by the DNA is suspicious.

• When the same Military Section of the DNA sued several heads of the Romanian Gendarmerie for rigging a competition for officers, the file was sent back to the Prosecutor's Office. The reason? The judges discovered a procedural flaw after four years.
• Another case that was initially known, but whose outcome was almost kept silent, is the one revealed by the Recorder, with files from Romanian Waters.
• In March, the verdict was given in the “Waitress from Romanian Waters” file.

General Vlad Gheorghiță is being investigated by the DNA for having issued an order for 20 students admitted to the Bucharest National University of Physical Education and Sport to go to the budget by supplementing the places, with three of them being employed as officers at MApN.

In one of the cases it is the daughter of a general, a student of Physical Education and Sport, judicial sources told HotNews.

The conclusion of justice in the Romanian Waters case

Often reported in the public space, abuses in employment or promotions in the public system have led to the triggering of several investigations. In some cases, prosecutors have self-reported following media investigations.

As was the case reported by the Recorder, in which a former waitress, without specialized knowledge, was employed at Apele Romaniane through an artifice: secondment upon request. The conclusion of justice?

The manager who hired the former waitress was finally acquitted by the judges. And it wasn't the only acquittal.

Three former heads of Apelor Române have been acquitted by justice in recent months, in the files in which they were accused of employment based on party cards, according to the data gathered by HotNews from the court portal.

Bacău Court of Appeal: Innocent

Last month, the Bacău Court of Appeal found innocent the former head of Human Resources of the Siret-Bacău Water Basin Administration, Ioan Tanasă, accused of initialing the illegal employment of two liberals: Marius Nechita (former county councilor PNL) at the head of the Neamț Water Management System, and Andrei Rîznic (former local councilor PNL), at the head of the Pașcani Independent Hydrotechnical System.

The hires had been made even though they did not meet the seniority and experience requirements for those positions.

All three were sent to court, but at the end of the trial the judges decided that they did not break a law, as is the legal framework in the case of abuse of office, but only a regulation, which is why they cannot be convicted.

“The Constitutional Court showed that the phrase “act prescribed by law” implies both the obligation of the civil servant to act – in the sense in which it must regulate the duties of the service (including the limits in which they are exercised), as well as the conditions in which he acted – in the sense in which the law must regulate the conditions of substance and form or the procedure for issuing the act that the civil servant had to fulfill”, the judge of the Bacău Court of Appeal held in the decision of May 21 by which the three were acquitted. The decision is final.

“The provisions of the collective labor contract valid at the level of the Romanian Waters National Administration are not legal provisions – with the character of secondary legislation that complements the norm of the primary legislation, they establish the attributions, not just detail them”, concluded the judge.

The “Waitress from Romanian Waters” file

Petru Avram, the former director of ABA Prut, was also found not guilty in the case in which he was accused of illegal employment. The investigation, triggered by the Recorder's investigation, was finally brought to justice in March of this year.

The former director, Petru Avram, was sent to court together with the management of a town hall in Suceava county, which mediated the employment of the young woman for an administrator position, so that the next day she would be seconded to ABA Prut.

And in the case of director Petru Avram, the judges ordered the acquittal, reasoning that he did not break any law. Instead, the mayor, the deputy mayor and the secretary of the municipality of Vatra Moldoviței were found guilty for having secured “a purely formal employment, intended only to ensure the conditions of the secondment”, the judges of the Iași Court of Appeal held in the judgment handed down on March 2.

Thus, the mayor of the municipality of Vatra Moldoviței, Virgil Saghin and vice-mayor Gabriel Niga, were each sentenced to three years in prison, to be served in detention, and the secretary of the municipality, Ana Boca, received a three-year suspended sentence.

The acquittal of the head of ABA Timiș

The third head of Romanian Waters sent to court for illegal employment was Caius Marius Parpală, the former director of ABA Banat. The scheme is identical to the one in Bacău. Parpală was accused of dismissing the heads of the Water Management Services from Timiș and Caraș-Severin, replacing them with unqualified persons for the respective positions, the appointments being dictated by political interventions.

On March 31, 2026, the Timiș Court decided to acquit Parpală, even though it admitted that the reason for hiring him was his political affiliation. The judge justified his acquittal by saying that the director had not broken a law, as the Constitutional Court regulated abuse of office, but only internal regulations.

“The court notes that no rule of primary legislation violated by the defendant has been identified, that the obligation invoked by the prosecution has a contractual origin and that the material element of the crime is not met. To expand the scope of abuse of office beyond the limits established by constitutional jurisprudence would be equivalent to an unpredictable application of the criminal law and to its transformation into an instrument of general sanctioning of administrative dysfunctions”, the judge of the Timiș Court held in the judgment handed down on March 31.

The DNA appealed the decision, currently the file is at the Timișoara Court of Appeal.

Return to the promotions file from the Romanian Gendarmerie

In 2021, the DNA announced the prosecution of several heads of the Romanian Gendarmerie, accused of defrauding the competitions organized at the level of the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Gendarmerie for the occupation of officer positions.

The file was instrumented by the Military Section of the DNA, which is also investigating the case of General Vlad Gheorghiță.

Eight defendants were sent to court including: Radu Gabriel Todoran, head of the Human Resources Directorate of the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Gendarmerie, Marian Corcodel, former commander of the Gendarmerie Administration and Service Base (BADJ), Petruț Daniel Rușanu, head of the Giurgiu County Gendarmerie Inspectorate, Valerică Guriță, head of the Vaslui County Gendarmerie Inspectorate (IJJ), Călin Viorel Lefter, captain in the Administration and Service Base of the Romanian Gendarmerie, and four other gendarmes from Giurgiu.

The judges judged that the evidence was administered unfairly

The prosecutors accused that the group organized at the level of the Romanian Gendarmerie had set a price for an officer position: 6,000 euros. Non-commissioned officers who wanted to become officers paid this amount and received the test subjects in advance.

For four years, the file stayed at the Bucharest Court and the Bucharest Court of Appeal in the preliminary chamber procedure. The “filter” whose duration should not exceed 60 days, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure, has the role of determining whether the prosecutors' investigation is procedurally correct.

In the present case, the Bucharest Court of Appeal established, last year, that the Gendarmerie chiefs, defendants in the present case, were informed too late of the quality of the file.

The judges judged that the evidence was administered unfairly.

The court criticized the prosecutor for procrastinating the investigation in rem (on the facts), although there were enough indications to order the investigation in personam.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal decided to cancel all the evidence administered from the date on which the prosecutors could have started the investigations in person, but they did not do so. Practically, all the evidence that supported the accusation of the prosecutor's office was declared null and void.

“The court finds that, through the written reasons or exclusively during the debates, the accused appellants invoked the violation of the right to the defense by not bringing to attention, immediately, the criminal accusation. The court finds that this criticism is a justified one”, the reasoning of the Bucharest Court of Appeal states.

The file, left without evidence, was returned to the DNA.

The illegal jobs that brought Liviu Dragnea to prison

The best-known case of indictment for illegal employment is that of the former president of the Social Democratic Party, Liviu Dragnea. Former minister and president of the Chamber of Deputies, Dragnea was definitively sentenced, in 2019, to 3 years and 6 months in prison with execution for inciting abuse of office in the case of fictitious employment at DGASPC Teleorman.

Two women were employed at DGASPC Teleorman, but none of them showed up at work, in reality working at the headquarters of the Teleorman PSD Organization. Dragnea was at that time the president of the Teleorman County Council and ordered the director of DGASPC to hire the two women.

In justifying the sentencing decision, the supreme court accused Liviu Dragnea of ​​”adopting an illegal, antisocial and immoral conduct, in disagreement with the public dignities held”.