THE NATIONAL ANTI-CORRUPTION DEPARTMENT, WORKING OVERTIME Corruption without borders

• Also, arrests and searches all over the country, for bank fraud, illegal reimbursement for medical services, requesting payoffs for offering children for adoption, charging for blood transfusions which according to the law should be provided free of charge - are seven of the many other cases which the National Anti-Corruption Department has begun working on.

The prosecutors of the National Anti-Corruption Department and the policemen are having quite a hot summer, and not because of the temperature outside.

Work is being done in overdrive and yesterday alone, the prosecutors have notified the public about six new cases, added to the many others that various politicians and businesspeople are being investigated in.

Yesterday's cases concern traffic of influence, abuse in office, taking and offering bribes on the contracting of IT licenses by three ministries, illegal reimbursements of fees for medical services, in Timişoara and Mehedinţi, bank fraud at BCR Alba Iulia, bribery in exchange for blood transfusions at the Slobozia Center for Transfusions, illegal adoptions in Teleorman, tax evasion in the family of "Leo from Strehaia" and a new case against the family of Sandu Anghel (nicknamed "Bercea Mondial"), for influence peddling in the Mircea Băsescu case.

This picture was perfectly described by potential presidential candidate Cătălin Predoiu.

"Romanian society has a sort of empire of gangsters of sorts", he said yesterday. Cătălin Predoiu was referring to "organized mobs that are trying to imitate what they saw gangsters do in movies".

• Băsescu in 2005: "The contract with the EADS is useless and corrupt"

The DNA yesterday announced that it has begun the prosecution in rem, for influence peddling, abuse in office, taking and offering bribes, in the case opened following the notification received by the Government's Audit Body, concerning the lease and the extension of software licenses for schools, for which approximately 9 million Euros were paid.

According to sources from the judicial system, the prosecutors of the DNA are interested in three specific contracts concerning software licenses, conducted between 2001 and 2013, according to Mediafax.

This is about the Contract for the lease of Enterprise Agreement Subscription licenses from Microsoft, concluded between the Romanian Government and Microsoft Ireland through Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) Austria GesmbH, worth 105 million dollars, conducted between 2004-2009, about the Contract for the lease of Enterprise Agreement Subscription licenses from Microsoft, concluded between the Ministry of Communications and Information Society and the D-CON.NET consortium, worth 96 million Euros, conducted between 2009 and 2013, and the Contract concerning the Computerized Education System (MEC SEI), concluded between Siveco and the Ministry of Education, worth 124 million Euros.

The representatives of Siveco yesterday told us that they do not have any additional information about this investigation.

Another contract targeted by the prosecutors is the one concerning the Integrated System for the Securing of the State Border (MAI SISF) concluded between EADS Deutschland GmbH Germany and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, worth 534 million Euros (extended in 2009 by an additional 200 million Euros).

Beginning to secure the border was one of the mandatory conditions for Romania's joining of the EU and, in the long run, the integration in the Schengen space.

According to information in the press, the contract with the EADS for the securing of the borders was signed in 2004, in the last months of the mandate of the government led by PM Adrian Năstase, without any call for tenders, after a selection of tenders. On behalf of the Romanian side, the contract was signed by general Toma Zaharia, and PM Adrian Năstase and chancellor Gerhard Schroeder attended the ceremony.

According to Wikileaks, in 2005, Traian Băsescu told the chargé d'affaires of the US Embassy in Bucharest that, in order to secure the Romanian borders, a contract was concluded with the European group EADS (more specifically with the German division). Băsescu said that the contract - worth 800 million dollars - was useless and corrupt, and the Americans seem to agree with him.

In 2011, since a date for the Schengen accession had not been set, president Traian Băsescu proposed redirecting the installment of 271 million Euros tranche stipulated in the budget for the securing of the borders towards the programs for supporting SMEs.

Even back then, the contract raised suspicions.

In the autumn of 2004, "Bursa" reported that the Council for Strategy of the Romanian Agency for Investments (ARIS), created through an emergency ordinance by the Năstase Cabinet, drew up one of the most important deals approved by the Năstase government, namely the contract with European company EADS.

The coordinator of the strategy board of ARIS was businessman Ion Ţiriac, who, just a few days after the creation of the agency brought in two major names as members of the Council: Klaus Mangold, the president of Daimler-Chrysler, a company which was a partner in the multinational EADS group, and Bodo Hombach, the former head of the Stability Pact.

The talks on the project for the securing of the borders, as a measure necessary for our integration in the European Union, began when Bodo Hombach was the coordinator of the Stability Pact.

Moreover, for a while, the "Border" project was managed by Ioan Rus, who was a business partner of Ion Ţiriac.

All this led to the suspicion that the project attributed to the EADS company was devised by Ion Ţiriac and his hunting partners and colleagues on the Council for Strategy, Klaus Mangold and Bodo Hombach.

• Microsoft and EADS are faced with charges of corruption in other countries as well

The notorious multinationals that appear in the DNA cases are also being investigated abroad on similar charges.

Last year, the press reported that the FBI is investigating charges of corruption against a UK subsidiary of the European aerospace group EADS in connection to a contract in Saudi Arabia. The FBI talked to a witness and came in possession of documents tied to the charges that the EADS subsidiaries had bribed high ranking military Saudis with luxury cars.

In 2012, several German offices of the EADS were searched by the prosecutors and the police, as part of an investigation concerning alleged bribery in order to win contracts for the sale of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets to Austria, five years earlier.

The prosecutors' office of Munich reported that the investigation was started by a larger investigation in Austria concerning a potential bribe offering to Austrian officials between 2005 and 2008.

Last year, Wall Street Journal reported that the US federal authorities are investigating Microsoft and several of it business partners who have allegedly bribed Romanian, Italian and Chinese officials to get contracts.

American investigators were checking whether Microsoft played any part in the case of any accusations according to which some intermediate companies could have offered bribes to win software licensing contracts with the Romanian Ministry of Communications.