The Chairman of the Parliament’s Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) Oversight Committee, Claudiu Manda, stated for MEDIAFAX that the members of the legislative body will go on Tuesday at 13.00 to SRI to find out details on the notes sent by the Romanian Intelligence Service to the National Integrity Agency (ANI) since it was led by Horia Georgescu.
The statement was given in the circumstances in which, after the committee’s visit since the last Tuesday at the SRI Legal Department, it found out that none of the notes sent by SRI to ANI was previously received by this department of the Romanian Intelligence Service.
“Tomorrow (on Tuesday, April 24 – e.n.), at 13.00, we will control SRI’s headquarter, the Analysis Department. It is interesting that we asked the Legal Department how the notifications of the Service were sent to ANI, but the Legal Department told us that they didn’t received anything. ‘But who received them and what did they do?’. ‘They were at the Analysis Department’, was their answer. Therefore, we’ll go to the Analysis Department to check” Manda stated for MEDIAFAX.
The Chairman of the SRI Oversight Committee Claudiu Manda stated, after the last Tuesday’s visit made by the members of the legislative body to SRI’s headquarter, that none of the notes sent by the Service to the National Integrity Agency was ever received by the Legal Department of SRI.
On April 17, the members of the SRI Oversight Committee went to the Legal Department of the SRI headquarter, in order to get clarifications on how the Service’s protocols with other institutions of the judiciary were applied.
On April 12, former head of ANI Horia Georgescu was heard for four hours by the SRI Oversight Committee and stated that he had a close personal relationship with the former SRI Director George Maior, but it seemed to be “only his point of view”.
Former head of the National integrity Agency, Horia Georgescu stated at the SRI Oversight Committee that he talked with George Maior, who at that time was the SRI Head, about the cases that were going to ANI, including Klaus Iohannis and Eduard Hellvig’s cases.
“The note related to Klaus Iohannis referred to incompatibility deeds since 2009-2010, then the file was sent to the Alba Iulia Court, then to ICJ. Georgescu was asked if he talked with Maior about the cases in ANI’s jurisdiction. The answer was yes. We asked him if he had talks when the files were already at the court. The answer was yes. There were no talks about mayors or local councilors. It is interesting that the case of the Mayor of Sibiu at that time was an exception in this dialogue” Claudiu Manda said about Horia Georgescu’s statement at the SRI Oversight Committee.
“He told us that he had the last talk about Mr. Iohannis’s case on September 19, 2014. We’ll check this in the committee, since it was a call made on an operative phone from SRI and an operative phone from ANI. It was the last talk on this issue. We asked him if he was requested to ask for a quicker hearing at the court. Mr. Georgescu said: ‘I do not confirm, I do not deny’” Manda added.
As for the incompatibility case of the current SRI Head Eduard Hellvig, the Chairman of the SRI Oversight Committee said: “In October 2102, he received the note on the Development Minister Eduard Hellvig, and the decision was issued in November 2012, at the beginning of the electoral campaign. Analyzing that notification, ANI established an incompatibility for Dan Mihalache at the same date. When asked if he had talks with Mr. Maior on the two cases, he said yes. When asked if the talks were held while the cases were pending at the court, he said yes”.
Being asked, after the hearings, if the notifications related to politicians were questionable to him, Hria Georgescu stated that he considered them coincidences. “I noticed at that time certain coincidences. Today I have definitely more questions, and I appreciate that I should have analyze this through a more critical filter and think more deeply to the moments when certain notifications were made. Everyone must assume what he did, and if there were personal interests of those who made those notifications, they should explain this” Horia Georgescu concluded.
“If there’s a SRI-ICCJ protocol, we’ll explicitly ask SRI for a report on this”
Referring to the protocol of collaboration concluded by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) and the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ), Intelligence Committee Chairman Claudiu Manda stated for Mediafax that the members of the committee will explicitly ask the Intelligence Service for the protocol, if it exists, and for a report on it.
“A national security warrant weren’t [sic] taken for a guilty act – not [based] on ‘we know that this guy is a terrorist’ but on ‘we want to see if this guy is a terrorist,’ which is fair and legal. It’s just that, by then extending it to corruption and tax evasion, you reach the following conclusion: we don’t know if this guy is corrupt, but let’s see, maybe he is. I point out I haven’t seen such a protocol between the SRI and the ICCJ, but solely a SRI-PICCJ-ICCJ protocol. It’s signed by the SRI, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the High Court of Cassation and Justice, which is a very technical protocol that talks about the flow of data from the confidential information domain. I haven’t seen anything else. If there is such a [SRI-ICCJ] protocol, we’ll explicitly ask for it, and for a SRI report or presentation on that area. The moment we ask for it, they can tell us on the spot that there is one and that they’ll send it; if they tells [sic] us there isn’t one, then it means there isn’t another one,” Claudiu Manda stated for Mediafax.
Supreme Court President Cristina Tarcea claims that the SRI-ICCJ protocol was concluded in 2009, following an ECHR decision meant to regulate the authorising of the issuance of wiretap warrants on national security grounds, since there was no legal framework.
The Supreme Court President claims that the protocol was concluded in 2009. Cristina Tarcea pointed out that the document was most likely concluded immediately after an ECHR decision issued in 2007, on the violation of the right to privacy after prosecutors ordered wiretaps based on national security grounds.
“The ECHR decision was issued in 2007. Based on the ECHR decision, which is mandatory in domestic law, it would have been normal and necessary to adopt a law amending law no.51/1991, which would stipulate the procedure to follow and the competencies of a court. I believe this is the reason why that protocol was concluded in 2009, because after the ECHR decision there was no legal framework on whose basis the courts, not the prosecutor’s offices, would have authorised the wiretapping. (…) It’s no longer applicable since 1 February 2014, because law no.255/2013 that came into force with the new Criminal Code regulated the procedure through which wiretapping is authorised by the ICCJ in case of national security crimes,” Cristina Tarcea told Antena3.
