“The idea of resigning from the European Parliament is out of question,” the MEP said upon leaving the DNA building.EuroDeputy Adrian Severin went yesterday at the head offices of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) in order to be informed about the criminal prosecution material in the case of corruption and bribe taking against him, Mediafax informs.
While entering the DNA building, Severin said that he does not have high hopes about this dossier, adding that he believes this is a setup, justified by his important position in foreign politics. “Neither did I commit myself, nor did I make approaches to determine someone else to submit amendments and modify the European legislation. (…) What I did was to sign a consultancy contract that was proved by the European Parliament, which is alright and which I executed,” he explained.
Upon leaving the DNA HQ, where he spent approximately four hours, Severin said that resigning from the EP is out of question. “Why should I consider resigning? A resignation is out of question because regardless what will happen, I have an absolutely clean conscience.”
“This is not something spontaneous discovered by someone, it is a provoked act or the attempt to provoke something. Those people came with the intent to determine some or others to do some things that are not alright and especially with the intention to demonstrate at the end that we did something incorrect,” Severin added.
The dignitary claimed that nothing was reproached to him, although he was a minister of privatisation and president of the Court of Commercial Arbitration. Adrian Severin also stressed that he does not think now whether to run for a new mandate. The MEP will return at the DNA in the coming days, to study the file.
Adrian Severin is probed by the DNA for bribe taking, influence peddling and using or presenting forged, inexact or incomplete documents, in view of obtaining undue funds from the general budget of European Communities or from the budgets administered by them, with very serious consequences, in continued form. The same file refers to documents of criminal prosecution against three other suspects, according to the DNA. According to the Ordinance that started the criminal probe, during 2007-2010 Adrian Severin “used and presented in the European Parliament fake or inexact documents and statements, contrary to legal regulations (art. 43 of the Norms of enforcing the Statute of Deputies in the European Parliament – the decision of the Bureau of 10 May 2008 and 09 July 2008).”
The documents refer to a series of consultancy contracts concluded with six Romanian companies, “created with the purpose of justifying fictive services, through the consultancy contracts,” the DNA prosecutors accuse.
“This way, the suspect Severin Adrian allowed some acquaintances to unjustly obtain the sum of EUR 436,663 from the budget of the European Parliament,” prosecutors say.
Adrian Severin said at the middle of January this year that he is the only MEP who must explain how he used his allowance.
In the spring of 2011, ‘Sunday Times’ reporters recorded by audio and video means a discussion with Severin in his Strasbourg office in which the MEP speaks about the approaches in view of introducing an amendment to an European directive. The British reporters proposed several deputies – a Romanian, a Slovenian and an Austrian – to pay them EUR 100,000 in exchange of getting some amendments passed. The three deputies accepted, AFP informed at that moment. Adrian Severin, a former deputy PM of Romania, sent the false lobbyists an e-mail: “Just to know that the amendment you want was filed in time.” Shortly afterwards, he also sent an invoice of EUR 12,000 for “counseling services.”
