According to the Romanian general attorney Laura Codruta Kovesi, prosecutors are working on a criminal case against the ex justice minister Monica Macovei, opened because of a criminal complained authored by Tudor Chiuariu, her successor at the Romanian Ministry of Justice. The general attorney also announced yesterday that the inquiry was now in the preliminary documentation stage preceding the start of criminal investigations. In October 9, 2007, the Ministry of Justice sent a criminal complaint to the Prosecutor's Office, after having run across clues pointing to intellectual fraud, during checks on the contract with the Freedom House organization, author of the audit that had been the grounds of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy adopted in 2005. The contract had been reached while Monica Macovei was Romania's minister of justice. The general attorney commented: "I can neither confirm nor deny if consent to criminal inquiry will be asked for, since this decision is up to the prosecutor in charge of the case only." The Ministry of Justice announced by press release that the checks on the way the Freedom House had won the auction for the audit were over. There is mentioned: "There have been noticed clues that the representatives of the Ministry of Justice, together with those of the Freedom House-Romania, used documents in their attempt to provide a seemingly legal cover to the procedure on the acquisition of the audit services grounding the government decision no. 231/ 2005 concerning the approval of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy in 2005-2007 and of the action plan on the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy in 2005-2007. Their deed may include elements of crime, as settled and sanctioned in Article 289 in the Criminal Code: intellectual fraud." In the same press release there is also reminded that, when answering questions on the purchase of the audit service, asked by the Chamber of Deputies in 2005-2006, the Ministry of Justice came up with inexact data on the procedure to select the Freedom House and on the structure of the team doing the audit. (...) The Freedom House leader Cristina Guseth denied the accusations coming from the ex justice minister Tudor Chiuariu.

Andrei GHICIUSCA