Bucharest---After a record year of graft indictments in Romania -- many targeting the wealthy and powerful -- the impunity once enjoyed by the country's ruling class may be coming to an end.
The national anti-corruption prosecutor's office DNA indicted 1,167 people in 2014, a record in its 12 years of existence.
The latest trophy for the prosecutors is Elena Udrea, dubbed "the president's blonde" by the media for her role as close advisor to former conservative president Traian Basescu.
The unsuccessful candidate in last year's presidential race was locked up late Tuesday over her alleged role in a corruption scandal involving Microsoft licences that has already ensnared a number of high-profile figures.
DNA prosecutors have been busy in recent weeks probing a who's who list of suspects that includes several former ministers, a Constitutional Court judge and even the head of the anti-mafia prosecutor's office (DIICOT).
For several years now, a reform of Romania's legal system overseen by Brussels has weakened the impunity that a number of political leaders seemed to enjoy.
The bellwether corruption conviction in 2012 of ex-prime minister Adrian Nastase was a sign times were changing in EU's second-poorest country.
"Judicial independence started to manifest itself under Traian Basescu, once even leaders from his camp started being convicted," said Cristina Guseth, president of the Romanian chapter of Freedom House, a pro-democracy group.
In November, voters sick of corruption elected President Klaus Iohannis, a ethnic German former mayor of the central city of Sibiu known as a defender of judges.
"There is no other path for Romania," other than becoming a nation "rid of all corruption," Iohannis said when he took power. This must "be understood clearly at every level of the political class."
- 'Rob the state' -
Prosecutors have not only targeted politicians, with Constitutional Court judge Toni Grebla being forced to resign last week amid amid accusations of corruption.
Media baron Adrian Sarbu, another icon of the post-communist era, has been behind bars for a week on tax evasion and money laundering allegations. Several other business titans, including billionaire Ioan Niculae, are targeted in other cases.
Questions remain about the timing of the Udrea case, which came two months after Basescu left office. He had publicly supported Udrea during his 10 years in power.
"Our probes run their course, without regard for political developments or the comments of politicians and the media," DNA spokeswoman Livia Saplacan told AFP.
Yet critics say more needs to be done.
"Two major means are used in Romania to rob the state: procurement contracts and tax evasion. The efforts of prosecutors are crucial, but not sufficient," Guseth said.
These investigations "show the state as it is: a corrupt mafia system, with power centres where ministry or prosecutor jobs are sold or trafficked and leaders pay a part of the commissions they receive to the parties they belong to," said political analyst Alina Mungiu-Pippidi.
She added the current power-sharing government, with a conservative as president and Social Democrats ruling the legislature, is key to rooting out graft.
"Law enforcement cannot decimate influence peddling by the major players and the looters of the country's wealth if power is concentrated in the hands of one party."
AFP
