Victor Ponta's father-in-law, member of the Board of Directors at Romsilva

After last summer, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu ordered Victor Ponta to be his honorary adviser in the field of international relations, another member of the former Prime Minister's family from 2012-2015 entered the good graces of the Head of Government. It is about the father-in-law of Victor Ponta, Ilie Sârbu - former parliamentarian, former Minister of Agriculture and former vice-president of the Court of Accounts -, who was appointed at the end of November as a member of the Board of Directors at Romsilva, a position that is remunerated with 7,300 lei monthly, which will be added to the special pension he receives. We mention that during the year 2023 Ilie Sârbu received from the Court of Accounts, as a salary, the amount of 325,000 lei, a pension of 72,000 lei from the Pension House and a special pension from the Senate of almost 52,000 lei.

Ilie Sârbu was vice-president of the Court of Accounts until October 2023, and the minister's order regarding his appointment as a member of the Board of Directors of Romsilva was signed on November 23, 2023 by Mircea Fechet, the Minister of the Environment, Waters and Forests. After being appointed as a member of the Board of Directors, on December 12, 2023, Ilie Sârbu became a member of the Audit Committee of the Autonomous Regime.

Asked why he appointed Victor Ponta's father-in-law as a member of the Board of Directors of Romsilva, Minister Mircea Fechet told Radio Europa Liberă: "I don't want to give my opinion about his reign. It was, however, in the past, a mandate, the Minister of the Environment, if some qualify this sufficiently, to be part of a provisional board of directors".

According to the information published by the mass media, Ilie Sârbu's links with forestry would be controversial, given his presence in a file prepared by the prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate, a file from which Ponta's father-in-law came out clean, by classifying the file against him , because there was no evidence that he had committed the crime he was accused of.

In October 2014, DNA prosecutors stated that Ilie Sârbu is being prosecuted in the Romsilva fraud case, along with Viorel Hrebenciuc, former deputy Ioan Adam and former Romsilva director Adam Crăciunescu. Prosecutors claimed at that time that the four formed an organized criminal group in 2012 through which they rigged a retrocession process that led to the disappearance of more than 40,000 hectares of forest from Romsilva's heritage. After only four years, in 2018, the DNA prosecutors ordered the closure of the file against Ilie Sârbu, on the grounds that there is no evidence that he committed the crime, according to the DNA press release.

The classification order states: "From the analysis of the evidence, it emerged that there is not enough evidence to support the commission by the respective person of the crimes of using influence by a person who performs a leadership position in a party for the purpose of obtaining for himself or another for improper benefits and supporting an organized criminal group".

The High Court of Cassation and Justice ordered in November 2023 the termination of the criminal trial against the defendants in the file of illegal retrocessions of forests from Romsilva, on the grounds that the facts of which they were accused had expired.

We also show that Ilie Sârbu coordinated as vice president of the Court of Accounts, including the department that audited Romsilva.