Fenechiu: The president asked to have me investigated in 2007

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During the Realitatea TV ‘Power Games’ show Wednesday night, Transport Minister Relu Fenechiu (PNL) presented a petition to the Presidency, asking for investigations into irregularities in which he had allegedly been involved, five years ago. The Presidency rejects the Liberal’s accusations.According to Fenechiu, the petition was thereafter forwarded by the Presidential Administration to the Prosecutor General of Romania, Laura Codruta Kovesi, asking her ‘to order checks and analyses of the facts reported’. ‘I have a paper here that you will find very curious. It’s a letter from the Presidency of Romania, dated 2007, to Laura Codruta Kovesi who is being instructed to take care of Relu Fenechiu,’ said the PNL minister, according to realitatea.net. The document disclosed by Fenechiu is an opinion enclosed with the petition, registered with number 983 on February 19, 2007. ‘Dear Prosecutor General of Romania, I am submitting to your attention the petition addressed to the President of Romania, Mr. Traian Basescu, with the request that you order verifications and investigations into the facts reported herein. We are also asking that you communicate to both the petitioner and to the Presidential Administration the resolution of this petition,’ reads the document which is signed by State Counsellor Gabriel Cristian Piscociu for the President of Romania, Traian Basescu. Fenechiu said the petitioner, whose name he would not disclose, had been convicted and given a three–year suspended sentence for blackmailing him. The minister of transport however did not name the alleged irregularities reported in the petition received by the Presidential Administration and did not say whether or not it was in his possession either. The president’s Spokesman, Bogdan Oprea, called in on Realitatea TV to say that the document sent by the Presidency to the Prosecutor’s Office, asking for checks on irregularities allegedly involving Relu Fenechiu was just one of the 35,000 – 36,000 petitions received every year, which the Presidency forwards to relevant institutions. ‘It’s a common fact,’ Oprea said.  Prior to the statement, PM Victor Ponta had told Fenechiu he had become an ‘international star’ and that the whole Europe ‘was eyeballing’ him. ‘You have already put on the coat of the guilty man on call,’ Ponta told Fenechiu. The Transport Minister is currently on trial in the ‘Transformer’ case on charges of abuse of office. President Traian Basescu has repeatedly denounced his presence in the Cabinet, even telling the PM to recall him because of his criminal circumstances. Moreover, in his now famous letter to Ponta on the JAI Council subject, Basescu publicly said that, when he had mentioned the removal from the Government of any minister in conflict with the criminal law, he had exclusively meant Relu Fenechiu.

CFR Marfa privatisation will happen. The IMF demands the move

On the other hand, Transport Minster Relu Fenechiu stressed, during the same TV show, that CFR Marfa would be privatised, that being something he had said would do, and noted he would like to sell he smallest stake possible – just over 50 per cent and that the plan was to write off the company’s debt and not sell the infrastructure. ‘The price of EUR 60 M represents an evaluation done by bureaucrats. When the debt is written off, we will be talking a different price,’ said the Liberal. Fenechiu said he would like CFR Marfa to continue as a state-owned company, but that, for the moment, such thing was no longer an option. ‘The IMF demands privatisation, because it has been lied to about reinvigorating one or another company far too many times. They said they had had enough of it, that they had been lied to for four years. So we had to agree to sell a majority stock. In fact, they originally wanted privatisation in full,’ Fenechiu said. On a distinct note, Fenechiu said Tarom should renounce operating the presidential aircraft Airbus A 310, as it causes the company an annual loss of EUR 7 M. Contacted on the phone, the Spokesman for the Presidential Administration, Bogdan Oprea, refused to comment on the subject. Prime Minister Victor Ponta also complained last December about the cost of the operation of the presidential airplane, suggesting the president and his advisers could travel abroad on regular commercial flights.