Liviu Dragnea: The Beginning of the End
Of all his misdeeds, it seemed unlikely that the paving of three local roads in his native Teleorman county would take down Liviu Dragnea, arguably the most powerful politician in Romania. However, on the evening of November 21st, 2017, Dragnea arrived at the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) for the second time in a week. He was formally announced that his assets would be frozen, as a result of his involvement in the Tel Drum affair, which had caused damages to the state of 127,547,366.34 RON (more than €27.4 million). The official execution of the President of the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) and head of the Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies was received with joy in the country.
A visible decline
It’s said that when the end is near, everything happens in fast forward. Indeed, throughout November Liviu Dragnea’s skyfall was sped up. On November 3rd, journalists published a contract showing that Dragnea had paid a lobbying company €100,000 for a meeting with US President Donald Trump, VP Mike Pence and President of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan. The company, Madison & Company LLC, was the same political lobby company used 10 years ago by then-PSD President and Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, himself sentenced for corruption acts. The money had been paid from the coffers of the party itself, although the deal was starkly denied by Mr Dragnea, who also cheekily retorted that “€100,000 is too little for me”. The deal had also been initiated on the same day the Romanian Supreme Court had reconfirmed its verdict of two years of jail time for Liviu Dragnea in the case in which he had been found guilty of rigging the referendum held in 2012 for dismissing Liberal Democrat (PDL) President Traian Basescu.
Apart from causing the public uproar due to the fact that a convicted felon was trying to meet with top US officials to whitewash his credentials, this moral breach revealed a connection between the lobbying contract and the Tel Drum case. The middleman for the deal was a councillor for Florin Iordache, the former Minister of Justice who had issued the emergency decree decriminalising abuse of office under €38,000 which had prompted hundreds of thousands of Romanians to protest in February. Dimitrache had also been Romania’s consul in New York during the Nastase government, and in 2003 had presided over the marriage of Liberal Democrat and convicted politician Elena Udrea with her former husband, Dorin Cocos (also convicted of corruption charges). Soon enough, it transpired that the similarities between the Tel Drum case and the Bute Gala case in which Elena Udrea had been sentenced, were not merely incidental.
OLAF steps in
On November 13th, the European Anti Fraud Office (OLAF) broke the news that Liviu Dragnea had been indicted for fraud as a result of an OLAF investigation followed up by the Romanian DNA. Soon afterwards, the DNA accused Dragnea and 4 other suspects of constituting an organised criminal group to fraudulently obtain money from public funds. Prosecutors have shown that the defendants had “used or presented documents in bad faith, or false, imprecise or incomplete declarations […] obtaining undue European funds […] and abusing their office through obtaining undue benefits […] by closing deals with preferential companies that rehabilitated three county roads in the Teleorman county”. It also accused Dragnea of “offering confidential information and modifying the tender’s technical specifications” and of forcing employees to do the same in order to have Tel Drum Ltd secure the project. In turn, the undue benefits obtained by Tel Drum Ltd were distributed between the members of the organised criminal group.
Furthermore, in 2016, Romania accepted financial corrections requested by the European Union in the Tel Drum case. This meant that €21 million that had been misspent by the organised criminal group were transferred back to the EU from Romanian taxpayers. It was recently revealed that the person who signed off on the 2009 deal was none other than Elena Udrea. At the time she was the Minister for Development and the right hand of Liberal Democrat (PDL) two-term President Traian Basescu, in cahoots with Liviu Dragnea, then the President of the Teleorman County Council and the right hand of PSD President and then presidential candidate Mircea Geoana. After the European Commission had suspended financing worth €800 million over the illegal use of EU funds, Udrea investigated the local cases identified by OLAF. In a rare cross-party act of goodwill, she “pardoned” this and a few other cases, because local authorities had been “cooperative”.
Paranoid scapegoating
Earlier on November 21st, Dragnea dramatically declared before the Parliament that, “I will be going to the DNA today. I’m going there to [have my wealth] frozen. They will probably freeze my life next.” While this declaration’s dramatic streak is notably cringeworthy, it also speaks volumes about the defence strategy adopted by Dragnea. After being investigated or convicted in three corruption probes, key PSD figures such as Bucharest Mayor Gabriela Firea or Prime Minister Florin Tudose, stopped supporting him publicly. Therefore, Dragnea convened a meeting with the PSD’s executive committee, and devised a laughable but effective scapegoating scheme.
In the meeting’s resolution, meant to evaluate the result of PSD’s past 10 months in power, the party blames its leader’s corruption charges on the existence of a “Parallel and Illegitimate State” made up of the DNA, the Secret Services, corporations, foreign forces, etc. “The “Parallel and Illegitimate State’s latest actions’ real and obvious purpose, dissimulated under the so-called “anti-corruption fight”, is to harass, and eventually decapitate the legitimately elected political power, so that this power cannot fulfill its electoral platform for its electorate.”
Paranoia aside, Dragnea can still wiggle his way out of a final conviction that would land him in jail and compromise his political career, if the PSD passes the new Justice Reform laws through Parliament before prosecutors finalise his case. By breaking the wings of Romania’s judiciary independence, Dragnea hopes to break his fall. Will he succeed?
