A conflict with potential criminal implications in the Council for Contestations

• Current president accuses the former management of having deleted the databases of the National Council for Contestations

• The former head of the Council: "The charges are unfounded. The current president is afraid of losing his position due to conflict of interest" • The prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Department are being asked to investigate this case

The National Council for Contestations (CNSC), the institution that solves the contestations of companies concerning public procurement auctions, is at the center of a huge scandal in which the current management accuses the former managers of sabotaging and attempting to obstruct the activity of the institution.

In March, the new chairman of the Council, submitted a memo to Prime-Minister Emil Boc. In it, he accused the former management of the institution of using a "scorched earth tactic", by erasing the databases which contained very important information, from loans taken from the public budget, bonuses and holiday leaves, to mail from and to the Specialized Department of the European Commission.

The memoir of the chairman Lehel Bogdan was received by the Investigative Body of the PM and was eventually forwarded to the National Anti-Corruption Department (DNA), as proven by the official documents obtained by BURSA.

• Lehel: "The databases of the Council were deleted"

In the quoted memo, Lehel Lorand Bogdan accuses: "Before the expiration of his mandate (February 23rd, 2010), the former president of the Council, (ed. note: Mihai Prisacariu), approved the termination of the labor contracts of four employees in the technical department, which included the head of the economic department and of the Human Resources department. Upon taking over the computers of the two employees it was found that the data and information concerning their activities was deleted. This included the organization structure, orders, holiday leave reports, seniority bonus information, balance sheet, loans from the state budget etc."

Things are the same when it comes to the computers owned by former president and by the third person who was hired as head of the registry office of the institution, who handled the relationships of the institution with its foreign partners, says Lehel Lorand Bogdan, who accuses: "In that department we found that all the mail exchanged with the foreign partners of the Council - the Specialized Department of the European Commission - D.G. Market and D.G. Reggio has been deleted, which means that we can"t uncover the obligations we have undertaken or the projects which we were currently working on with them".

• The website of the Council belongs to an individual

What"s more, Lehel Lorand Bogdan added that the Council does not own the domain name for its website -www.cnsc.ro, which is owned by an individual.

"The wiping of all this data and information as well as the transfer of the title of ownership of the domain, could endanger the activity of the CNSC, as these actions could only serve one purpose, namely to boycott and disrupt the operation of a government institution", Lehel said.

In the quoted memo, he said that the aforementioned actions could be punishable by jail.

When contacted by BURSA, the officials of the Council were restored in electronic format. "The deletion of data which was stored electronically have threatened the activity of the CNSC", and "its recovery has hindered the day-to-day operations of the administrative and economic department of the institution", the officials of the institution said, in a reply sent to our editors.

• Prisacariu: "All accusations are groundless"

Contacted by BURSA, Mihai Prisacariu, who is now an advisor with the General Secretariat of the Government, claims he is innocent: "All these accusations are unfounded. It is not true that the data was erased. There is a handover protocol which was signed by the current management of the institution".

When asked about the possible reason behind these allegations, Mihai Prisacariu said: "Most likely, the current chairman of the CNSC, who is involved in a conflict of interest, according to information which appeared in the press, is afraid he might lose his position after an investigation of the National Agency for Integrity. If this were to happen and new elections were held, than I would most likely run for the position of chairman of the CNSC".

It must be noted that in his statement of interests, Lehel Lorand Bogdan only mentions that he is a member of the National Union of Law Advisors.

As for the website of the Council, Mihai Prisacariu says that the individual which owns the Internet website is his friend and he says he resorted to this solution due to the following reasons: "I have resorted to this solution before the Council was created, to avoid the risk of having someone else reserve the website. It is true that we failed to make the necessary changes after the CNSC became a legal entity, but the internet domain did eventually become the property of the Council".