English
• Interview with PSD senator Valer Marian, the vice-president of the Commission for the investigation of abuse, fighting corruption and petitions
Reporter: I will start off by asking you about the current stage of the lawsuit which Sorin Blejnar filed against you last year?
Valer Marian: On Friday, February 24th, 2012, in the court of Cluj-Napoca, we had the first hearing in the solatium lawsuit which the president of the ANAF Sorin Blejnar filed against me one year ago, namely on March 1st, 2011, at the Court of Satu Mare. Through that lawsuit, he asked that I be forced to pay him 1 leu in solatium and to apologize to him in two newspapers and on two national televisions, because he claimed that I harmed his public reputation through certain political statements which I made, especially through the one which I titled "A call to the prosecutors of the National Anti-corruption Department: Please don't leave Sorin get away!", in which I mentioned his involvement in the smuggling of fuel and cigarettes. At the request of Ovidiu Blejnar, the High Court of Cassation and Justice changed the venue of the lawsuit from the Court of Satu Mare to that of Cluj-Napoca, which represents the object of the file no. 2233/298/2011. The head of the National Tax Administration agency did not show up for the first hearing, nor did his lawyers, claiming that he hadn't been subpoenaed at his chosen residence, which is the professional office of law firm Manolache and Associates, where his wife Andreea Florentina Blejnar is also an associate, and that he was subpoenaed at his legal residence, which he mentioned in the lawsuit against him. Because of this procedural flaw, the lawsuit was postponed until May 18th, 2012. Sorin Blejnar did not show up at the hearing held at the Court of Satu Mare, on June 8th, 2011, requesting the change of the venue. I was expecting him to come on Friday, after, he said on a national TV station, on November 11, 2011, that his main detractors, the former head of the Customs of Ploieşti Diana Severin, Vasile Lincu, the head of the Pro Lex policeman union and myself, PSD Satu Mare senator Valer Marian, do not have the guts to show up for the hearings in the lawsuits he filed against them. I showed up before the Court of Cluj with two bags full of written evidence, namely with official documents, press clippings and notices from employees of the customs, tax institutions, special services and even from his native village, Troaş, in the commune of Săvârşin, county of Arad. I have also prepared a list of witnesses to appear in court, as well as a comprehensive examination, with about 200 questions concerning the past and the present of the head of the Romanian National Tax Administration. I hope that plaintiff Blejnar will show up for the next hearing, and if he can't afford to pay his way, I pledge to do it for him, even if he were to use the plane. Since we are talking about money, I was ready to pay his solatium of 1 leu, and I was just undecided on whether I should put in the palm of his hand or stick it to his forehead, to check whether, as the chief-collector of the money of the Romanian people, he knows what the Romanian banknote with the lowest face value looks like. Since the head of the ANAF called me out with this lawsuit, I want to stress that I will approach it with the "No surrender" slogan, meaning I will be merciless, and I will not give up.
Reporter: Going from the particular to the general, after the actions of the authorities to fight tobacco smuggling last year, how did this illegal market evolve?
Valer Marian: After the raids and the arrests of some customs offices of the first quarter of 2011, we have seen a drop in cigarette smuggling from Ukraine in the North Western counties bordering that country (Satu Mare and Maramureş). For comparison, according to the balance sheets of the Border Police Inspectorate of the County of Satu Mare (IJPF), in Q1 2010 the border policemen seized 210,260 packs of cigarettes, worth 895,108 lei, and in Q1 2011 they seized 170,111 packs of cigarettes, worth 725,000 lei. Suspiciously, the Border Police Inspectorate of the County of Satu Mare did not publish its assessment for the second quarter of 2011. The relative decrease in contraband and the temporary respite, of a few months, on the border with Ukraine, have also come as a result of the change of regime in Kyiv, as the current center-left government started a purge among the border patrolmen and customs officer who were known to be loyal to the former "orange" regime. As part of this campaign, even the famous general Motroshilov, who was involved in coordinating and protecting a faction of Ukrainian smugglers, who was the commander of the regiment of border patrolmen of Vinogradov was dismissed.
But if we use the presence of Ukrainian cigarettes in the produce markets of various cities, in neighborhood stores and in the village bars as a gauge, we can't actually speak about a decrease in the contraband phenomenon, as the cigarettes with Ukrainian stamps can be found in all the markets of the county of Satu Mare. The local barometer of the cigarette contraband is the Someş square, in the city of Satu Mare, where Ukrainian cigarettes are very easy to find and buy at all times, being sold by smugglers, predominantly Gypsies.
Reporter: Have the smugglers diversified their methods?
Valer Marian: While a decrease in the smuggling of cigarettes through customs has occurred, more specifically in the Halmeu customs of the Satu Mare village, smuggling through the so-called green strip on the border between Romania and Ukraine border (using minivans, cars, carts, horses, donkeys or even by foot) has increased exponentially. The smugglers of Satu Mare also use unconventional methods to avoid the law. They ride carts pulled by well trained horses all the way to the border area, they load them with contraband cigarettes which they cover in hay, corn, etc., depending on the season, and then they let the horses return home by themselves. As a result, the smugglers don't risk anything if the border policemen intercept the carts and the horses, as they are already home waiting. If nothing happens, the horses slowly get home, pulling the carts full of smuggled cigarettes behind them.
Reporter: Could you give us some examples of smuggling cases?
Valer Marian: On September 18th, 2011, on bumpy ground, in a forest near Bixad, the border policemen found 15 boxes, the equivalent of 7,500 packs of "Jin Ling" cigarettes, worth approximately 31,500 lei, but the smugglers who were carrying the merchandise disappeared.
In October 2011, in a car owned by a woman of Batarci, the border policemen found 5,000 packs of "Jin Ling" cigarettes. A few days later, the border policemen found several people who passed the border from Ukraine into Romania, heading towards Dabolţ, carrying large boxes. They immediately tried to arrest them, but they ran away, leaving the boxes behinds. In the 15 boxes, the border patrolmen found 7,500 packs of "Jin Ling" cigarettes, with a Ukrainian fiscal stamp, originating from "duty free" stores, worth 32,250 lei.
In November 2011, in the car of a citizen of Satu Mare, the border policemen found five boxes which included 2,500 packs of "Jin Ling" cigarettes, worth 10,775 lei, which had Ukrainian duty free stamps.
On December 16th, near the town of Negreşti - Oaş, workers of the Border Police Inspectorate of the County of Satu Mare have seized approximately 15,000 packs of cigarettes of Ukrainian origin, worth 64,500 lei, which several persons tried to illegally bring into the country. Aside from these captures, the smugglers have most likely succeeded in introducing other quantities of cigarettes into the country as well, without being caught by the authorities.
Reporter: Have any of the criminal cases which involve customs workers been completed?
Valer Marian: In the beginning of December 2011, the Court of Satu Mare rendered a ruling in the "Bribery at the Halmeu customs office", sentencing the five defendants to jail time with a total duration of 24 years. The former head of the Halmeu Customs Office, Nicoleta Dobrescu, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison, for paying bribes, as she was charged with offering 130,000 Euros through proxies to be appointed as an interim on that position by the President of the Romanian Customs Authority. We can say that both the National Anticorruption Department, as well as the courts were swift and firm when it came to the former head of the Halmeu customs as well as her intermediaries, but we want them to be just as strict when it comes to the former head of the National Customs Authority, Radu Mărginean, and to the high level graft peddler, Eugen Petrescu, member and significant sponsor of PDL in Bucharest, in the case of whom the National Anticorruption Department decided to disjoin the investigation in March 2011, and nothing has been heard ever since about the progress of that investigation. I really hope that they will not dodge prosecution because of their close ties to Senate president Vasile Blaga, as it is known that Radu Mărginean was the subordinate and successor of Blaga at the helm of the Oradea Customs Department. I hope that these things won't matter and that the various talks between various regional and county subordinates and the current head of the National Customs Authority, Viorel Comăniţă (who also works as vice-president of the ANAF and is known as the right hand of Sorin Blejnar ever since he worked as the head of the Legal Department and of the Excise Supervision Department of the ANAF), who brags about his close relationship with Romania's general prosecutor, Laura Codruţa Kovesi, saying that he has been her colleague in law school and that they worked together in Sibiu (Comăniţă as lawyer, and Kovesi as prosecutor) won't help them escape prosecution.
Reporter: Do you know any cases of smuggling which involved state employees who were not prosecuted?
Valer Marian: Some notorious cases of cigarette smuggling which saw no prosecution are those which involved the head of the Border Police, chief commissioner Vasile Maxim, and his deputy, Tiberiu Gim Giurea, whom the local press has been writing about for the last 4-5 years and about whom I have made political statements and enquiries myself since I became a member of the Parliament. They were appointed by the current "orange" government in 2005 and they have remained in place under all the governments, whereas, like I said earlier, in Ukraine, a non-EU country, their peers were replaced when a new government came along. I have discovered that the secret of the impunity of the heads of the border police of Satu Mare is their connection to politicians or secret services, as chief commissioner Maxim is protected by Radu Giurcă, the prefect of the county of Satu Mare, and chief commissioner Giurea is an undercover officer of a secret service. Unfortunately, and I have said so on many other occasions, the heads of the police inspectorates or of the security and internal protection services (SIPI) of the counties of Satu Mare and Maramureş aren't exactly strangers to smuggling, themselves. The most telling case of a person who was not prosecuted is Constantin Traian Igaş, the Minister of Administration and Internal Affairs, who was involved in cigarette smuggling, according to former or current policemen, intelligence officers or citizens in the county of Arad. Besides, in autumn 2010, after becoming the minister of Internal Affairs, the first thing that Igaş did was to promote the head of the Border Police Inspectorate of the County of Arad to the position of questor, with the blessing of president Traian Băsescu, and he was planning to later appoint him as head of the National Border Police Inspectorate. He hasn't achieved that goal because, in a political statement and through a parliamentary enquiry, I have revealed that in 2002, Handra was fired from the position of chief of the Nădlac Border Police Sector, because the Hungarian authorities informed the Romanian side that he was involved in cigarette contraband. Even though he hasn't succeeded in placing questor Handra at the helm of the Romanian border police, minister Igaş was successful in placing men he could trust at the helm of the territorial inspectorates of the border police of Timişoara (Cristinel Şaptebani), Oradea (Gheorghe Iancu) and Sighetu Marmaţiei (Liviu Bute), thus gaining control of the South-West and North-West of Romania, from the county of Caraş-Severin to the county of Suceava.
Reporter: You repeatedly mentioned the "Jin Ling" cigarettes. Are these cigarettes the most frequently smuggled into Romania?
Valer Marian: In autumn 2011, the first significant captures made by border policemen of Satu Mare began showing up on the border with Ukraine. In most cases, the smugglers tried to bring "Jin Ling" cigarettes into Romania, for which no legal market exists in Europe. This brand has never advertised itself and these cigarettes can not be found in stores, as they are only sold illegally and trafficked by factions which hope to make huge gains from the sale of unstamped cigarettes, without paying excises and taxes, on the European black market. According to an investigation made by the Reporters of the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism, the "Jin Ling" cigarettes are legally manufactured in Russian and Ukrainian plants, but are intended for the illegal European market. Officials of the European Union anti-fraud office (OLAF) have set up a Task Force dedicated to the "Jin Ling" problem. According to them, smuggling of "Jin Ling" cigarettes has become a major problem in the EU, causing significant losses to the national budgets, as well as to the EU budget.
Reporter: Thank you!
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Dolar SUA
Franc elveţian
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