Page 89 - bne Magazine February 2023

bne February 2023
foreground of a video Tate posted to Thunberg. When he was arrested shortly afterwards, this sparked a frenzy of online speculation that the pizza box had given away his location, though prosecutors later refuted this, saying the arrest followed a months-long investigation.
Fifteen of Tate’s luxury cars as well as over 10 properties
and land plots have now been seized by prosecutors. A spokesperson for DIICOT confirmed to local media that the cars, including a Rolls-Royce and a Bugatti, had been seized to cover the costs of the investigation. They may also be used to compensate the alleged victims in the case if a conviction is made.
On January 11, a Romanian judge extended the Tate brothers’ detention for 30 days, pointing out that due to their “financial capacity” they might flee the country for a destination that does not allow extradition.
The investigation continues. On January 12, DIICOT carried out additional house searches in the Bucharest, Ilfov and Prahova regions as part of its investigation, a spokesperson for the agency said.
Tate’s defence lawyer says there is no substance to the allegations. Lawyer Eugen Vidineac told Romanian news site Gandul that the criminal investigation file had not been made available to the defence team. He claimed there is “not a single piece of evidence, apart from the victim’s statement, leading to the idea that a crime of rape was committed”, or evidence of human trafficking or organised crime.
As pointed out by Tate, corruption is an issue in Romania. It remains one of the more corrupt countries in the European Union – of the 27 members only Bulgaria and Hungary were
Some of the items found at the location where the Tate brothers were detained. Source: DIICOT/Romanian Police.
Opinion 89 more corrupt, according to Transparency International’s 2022
Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
However, the country has made great strides in the fight against corruption in recent years, notably under the former head of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), Laura Codruta Kovesi. Despite some controversies over the methods used by the DNA, the agency’s success in prosecuting
high level current and former officials has inspired efforts
to replicate it in other Emerging European countries.
“There is not a single piece of evidence, apart from the victim’s statement, leading to the idea that a crime of rape was committed”, or evidence of human trafficking or organised crime”
Government officials eventually succeeded in removing Kovesi from the helm of the DNA, but she was then picked as the first head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office with a pan-EU mandate.
Nor is corruption tolerated by the Romanian population.
The year Tate moved to Romania, 2017, was also the year that hundreds of thousands of Romanians took to the streets to demonstrate against official corruption in the largest protests the country has seen since the fall of communism.
The trigger for the protests – covered extensively by bne IntelliNews’ correspondents in Bucharest – was government efforts to change the law by emergency decree to pardon certain sentences and decriminalise abuse of office. These were widely believed to have been tailored to help corrupt politicians. At the peak of the protests, more than half a million Romanians were out on the streets.
Romania made a breakthrough in November 2022 when the European Commission recommended terminating the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) aimed at monitoring Romania’s progress in the area of justice. The CVM was introduced after Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007 to monitor their progress on the rule of law, fighting corruption and – for Bulgaria – organised crime. Its lifting thus confirms how far Romania has come.
Progress on fighting corruption happens in fits and starts, with advances and setbacks, in Romania. But, as Tate has now found, it is far from being a haven for corrupt or criminal acts to be committed without consequences.
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