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The closure in 2023 of more than 6,700 criminal corruption cases due to the intervention of the criminal statute of limitations could have been avoided if the politicians who occupied the seat of Minister of Justice from November 2019 until now had done their job, he claims, in two posts on the official Facebook page of Ana Birchall, former Minister of Justice in the Dăncilă government between April and November 4, 2019.
Ana Birchall points out: "This practice of closing files because the statute of limitations has run has continued in 2023 and will continue in 2024. Anyone answer? (...) For example, those who initially drafted so unprofessionally the article of the Penal Code declared unconstitutional by the CCR. Or the ministers who, starting at the end of 2019 (when this aspect could be regulated without risk of constitutionality), did not do anything, although I, when I left the Ministry of Justice, left in the ministry the necessary analysis for the legislative change that was required. Or the prosecutors and judges who procrastinated for years the investigation and judgment of the cases. Or does it continue with the already traditional "let it go"? The files are closed on a conveyor belt, those who broke the law get away, not a single leu is recovered... And we still wonder why the trust in the justice system of honest and good-faith Romanians is on the verge of collapse!".
Among those accused by the former Minister of Justice is Cătălin Predoiu, the current Minister of the Interior, about whom Ana Birchall states that during his mandate at the head of the Ministry of Justice, the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure were drafted and adopted, including the article on prescription (article declared unconstitutional).
Ms. Birchall concludes: "In any normal country only for this harm caused to justice, the rule of law and Romanians' trust in justice, such people would have disappeared permanently from public life... Only in Romania they are promoted!".
We also tried to find out the opinion of the Minister Cătălin Predoiu and the former Minister of Justice, Stelian Ion about the statements made by Mrs. Birchall, but the two politicians did not answer our calls until the close of the edition.
We note that, at the end of December 2023, the number of cases closed by finding that the deadline for bringing criminal liability has reached 6,747 files. The decisions handed down in 2022 by the Panel for resolving some legal issues from the High Court of Cassation and Justice, as well as those given by the Constitutional Court regarding the statute of limitations, led to the closure of the majority of corruption cases pending before the courts last year. The only solution of the judges - obliged to comply with the decisions of the ÎCCJ and CCR - was, inevitably, the same: the termination of the criminal process as a result of the statute of limitations. Among the high-ranking defendants who escaped prison last year due to the intervention of the statute of limitations of criminal liability is Şerban Pop (former vice-president of ANAF, sentenced on merits to 13 years in prison for a bribe of 2.5 million euros taken from Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu in order to ensure, from the top of the Tax Office, an illegal VAT refund of almost 230 million lei to Petromservice), Elena Udrea (accused of influence peddling of 3.4 million euros in favor of businessman Bogdan Buzăianu, in The Hidroelectrica case - the decision in this case belongs to the court of first instance, the final decision to be pronounced by the ÎCCJ at the end of January 2024), Ioana Băsescu (accused of inciting embezzlement and money laundering, in the 2009 electoral campaign financing case), Elena Udrea - in the same 2009 campaign financing file where she was accused of inciting bribery and money laundering - and Darius Vâlcov - who, thanks to the statute of limitations, escaped a sentence of 6 years and 6 months for bribery .
Decisions to terminate criminal proceedings in corruption cases as a result of the intervention of the limitation of liability are given by magistrates, without taking into account the decision of 24 July 2023 of the Court of Justice of the European Union which claims that national courts are not authorized to apply a national protection standard regarding the principle of retroactive application of the more favorable criminal law (lex mitior) in circumstances such as those derived from the respective criminal cases.
The CJEU judgment shows: "Such a resumption of discussion would thus have the consequence of aggravating the systemic risk of impunity for crimes affecting financial interestsof the Union arising from the simple lack of reasons for the interruption of the prescription for almost four years in Romania".
Although the decision of the CJEU should be applied in all criminal trials of corruption and fraud with European funds, it seems that it intervened too late and the prosecutors in our country were no longer able to request the annulment of the solutions to terminate the criminal trial pronounced by the courts in the last year .
Thus, the criminals did not answer criminally, although in the respective files the damages amounted to billions of euros, damages that will remain unrecovered, amounts to which are added millions or tens of millions of euros representing costs of the investigation and criminal trial.
• Stelian Ion: "Ms. Birchall's position is more of a form of arrogance without cover"
The former Minister of Justice in the Cîţu government, deputy Stelian Ion (USR) believes that the statements of Mrs. Ana Birchall represent more of a form of arrogance without cover.
Stelian Ion declared for the newspaper BURSA: "During the mandate of the Minister of Justice, Mrs. Ana Birchall did not promote any project to amend the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, but a working group was established to update and systematize the changes required for the two codes. The only minister of justice in the period 2018-2022 who had a position from which it follows that she would have seen the problem, would have been aware of the danger of the legislative vacuum, is Ana Birchall, who, however, questions rhetorically what the other ministers were guarding, explaining that she could not intervened (through the GEO, as if he could not promote through the Ministry of Justice, or as a deputy, a specific project/legislative proposal to solve the problem) because the proposal resulting from the Iordache Commission was in Parliament. Nothing stopped the minister of justice or a very smart deputy, smarter than all the others put together, to propose the addition of art. 155 with para. (1) which the CCR later told us ceased to apply on 9 August 2018. The truth is that at that time it was almost impossible to predict the CCR mess of 2022 and Ms Birchall's position is more of a form of arrogance without covering. Just as he was represented by the numerous advices he gave us from the stands, on how to abolish the Criminal Investigation Department of the Justice Department in 2021, ignoring without a trace of embarrassment the fact that he had voted side by side with her fellow Pesedists from the Dragnea Era for the establishment of the special section".
Mr. Stelian Ion specified that Ana Birchall's successor as minister, Minister Cătălin Predoiu, throughout 2020 did not propose any project to harmonize the criminal legislation with the decisions of the CCR, although a project was already drawn up at the Ministry of Justice extensive, since the time of his predecessor, which included several articles that had to be put into agreement.
Regarding his mandate as Minister of Justice, Stelian Ion said: "After taking over the minister's portfolio, I reactivated the working group established in 2019 that had dealt with the initial drafting of the project to amend the two criminal codes in order to update it , to complete it with the other decisions that have appeared in the meantime and to finalize it. In April 2021, this working group focused on amending the Criminal Procedure Code in accordance with CCR decision no. 233/07.04.2021, an extreme decision, which imposed the obligation to provide reasons for criminal court rulings with the pronouncement and had the potential to create a legislative vacuum. The text was completed in good time, being promoted as a parliamentary initiative to buy time. A disaster with a negative impact on many criminal files was thus avoided. In July 2021, we completed the draft amendment to the Criminal Code and started the procedure for adopting the draft amendment, putting the draft in public consultation, and which included the amendment of art. 155. The consultation deadline expired on September 8, after which it could be approved in the government and sent to Parliament. On September 2, we also put the draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code into public consultation. After October 15, 2021, this project could also be sent for approval to the Government and then to the Parliament. After the USR left the government, in the future Cabinets, Mr. Predoiu returned to the position of Minister of Justice, but instead of continuing the procedure of approving the draft laws in the government, after about half a year, without any rational justification, put the two projects back into consultation. Instead, immediately after the pronouncement of CCR decision no. 358/2022 Predoiu initiated a GEO amending art. 155 of the Criminal Code, although he could request the adoption of a parliamentary initiative submitted in December 2021 by my colleagues from the USR, similar to the GEO project, which is in the decision-making chamber. From a certain perspective, the approach was late because it did not save the thousands of files that will be closed, but what is worse is that the amendment of the Criminal Code through the GEO was an extremely risky way because it further makes vulnerable the institution of the interruption of the limitation of criminal liability ( The GEO was issued under the conditions in which there was a legislative proposal with the same object in the Parliament, located in the decision-making chamber, which could be adopted in a single day)".
Looking back, Mr. Stelian Ion believes that the reason why he did not speed up the procedure is primarily the fact that there was no extreme CCR decision at that time that would create the risk of a legislative vacuum.
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