General Gabriel Gabor, chief of the Human Resources Division of MoD, questioned yesterday as witness in a corruption lawsuit, acknowledged that he interceded with acquaintances for the businesswoman from Vaslui, Maricica Iovita, charged with having given money in order that the businessman Adrian Porumboiu would be investigated.

The General admitted he knew the businesswoman from Vaslui, Maricica Iovita, charged alongside the former prosecutor Ioan Ciofu, and interceded with his “acquaintances” in her favour. Asked by the judges how the businesswoman had asked him to help her, the General declared that he could not help Maricica Iovita directly because he was not a friend of the Interior Minister Vasile Blaga or the deputy prosecutor general of Romania at that time, Marcel Sampetru. In exchange, the general said in front of the Supreme Court that he appealed to his acquaintances, namely another general, Avram Catanici, about whom he knew that he was a friend of minister Blaga.

In another case, Gabor also said, Iovita had requested him to intercede with the deputy prosecutor general of Romania at that time, Marcel Sampetru, to submit directly to the Prosecutor’s Office of the High Court of Appeals and Justice several documents regarding the businessman Adrian Porumboiu. This time again, he did not intercede directly because he had only professional relations with Sampetru, Gabor said.

But, in order to help Iovita, the witness said that he contacted Colonel Doru Blaj, who was the chief of the Division of military safety. Gabor said that he called Blaj and put him in contact with Iovita with the request to help her.

The general was questioned within the lawsuit in which Maricica Iovita is charged with having given money to prosecutor Ioan Ciofu (who has become a lawyer in the meantime), in order to charge Adrian Porumboiu with economic offences. Yesterday was questioned as witness also Elena Iordache, who was in 2005 deputy chief prosecutor of the Section on criminal pursuit from the Prosecutor’s Office of the supreme court, where prosecutor Ioan Ciofu was working, after he had been removed from DNA.

The National Anticorruption Division states that during May-August 2006 Ioan Ciofu, in his capacity as prosecutor with the Prosecutor’s Office of the High Court of Appeals and Justice (where he returned after he was removed from DNA, subsequently asking to be transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office of Iasi Court of Appeal) had allegedly claimed and received in installments, from the defendant Maricica Iovita, benefits totaling around EUR 10,000, representing money (EUR 5,500 and RON 4,000) and flight tickets in the name of his relatives to travel to cities from Europe and Asia. Iovita said all this time that she had given this money to Ciofu in order to help his wife, badly ill, and not with the purpose declared by DNA. The two were arrested preventively at the beginning of October 2006, but they were released soon after the nine-judge panel of the Supreme Court decided to replace this measure by the prohibition to leave the country.