Romania: Prosecutors Overwhelmed
Criminal organizations that traffic in drugs, launder money and smuggle cigarettes thrive in Romania amid corruption, lax judicial attitudes toward drug dealing, an exaggerated regard for suspects’ rights and gaps in the law.
"If you are hungry and you steal a loaf of bread you get twelve years in prison. Steal millions of Euros and you won’t do a day. This is the problem with the Romanian justice system,” said a Romanian police officer who specializes in fighting organized crime.
Corruption in the justice system and government provides a fertile ground for criminal organizations to develop their abilities to steal public money. At the same time, loopholes in Romanian laws enable criminals to walk free if they are caught, wasting tax money spent on costly police operations. And the judges’ leniency does little to deter drug traffickers in the future.
According to a February report by
Drugs: Not a Social Threat
The failures of the Romanian judiciary system are underscored by major drug traffickers who go free soon after they are caught.
Some judges and prosecutors will say anonymously that although money and well-connected lawyers help some drug dealers say out of jail, some judges just don’t view drug trafficking as a significant social threat.
A recent case underscores this attitude. In early November 2007, the Department for Combating Traffic in Illegal Substances (DCTIS) started tracking an international heroin trafficking ring led by Fazli Onluturk, a Turkish citizen. The drugs were sent from
On the night of January 12, a truck loaded with 21 tons of oranges entered
An undercover officer who worked on the case and spoke anonymously explained his frustration: "The head of the network hides in
"It’s a paradox,” he said. “The trafficker who gets caught with a few hundred grams of narcotics is considered a social threat and we are allowed to keep him arrested while the ones who get caught with kilograms of drugs aren’t a social threat. There’s no logical explanation. The judges say that the persons they are freeing are no social threat because they are simple dealers in a larger network. But this dealer is part of a criminal organization. Any officer that investigates something like this isn't up against the dealer but against the whole group. According to the law, traffickers should be getting 25 years in prison for drug trafficking felonies. The drug trafficking in itself represents a social threat, as the drugs get to the consumers."
A similar tale to that of the Turkish heroin ring stems from
Responding to the idea that drug traffickers are not a social threat, the president of the Romanian Agency against Drugs (ANA, www.ana.gov.ro), Pavel Abraham, pointed out that the money from drug trafficking is used to finance international terrorism and that 7500 deaths are associated with drug consumption every year in Romania. And, since the beginning of 2008, Romanian custom officers have seized about 400 kilograms of heroin worth more than USD 16 million.
Surveillance Complaints
Corrupt politicians and criminals also use human rights issues to shield themselves from prosecution. Instead of maintaining their innocence, they complain of the way evidence against them was gathered. Police and prosecutors fighting organized crime themselves complain that the period they are allowed to tap the phones of suspected criminals—up to four months― is too short. Another undercover IGPF officer said anonymously, "If we are not able to prove the facts in this time span, we are no longer allowed to intercept. But we are working on trans-border cases. We really do need more time for intercepting, because we have cases where we work in cooperation with other states. They intercept members of a network in their country; we intercept members that are in
“Then I see myself forced to go through a lot of paperwork to officially ask for access to the transcripts of the phone conversation in which the trafficker in their country is talking to the trafficker here,” he said. “At this point, which country will still consider us a serious partner? No matter what evidence we have, after four months, we're forced to stop. Show me a network like Hossein Karimi’s, in which 18 traffickers were arrested, that needs to be intercepted in only four months! This is la dolce vita for traffickers."
The man he was talking about, Hossein Karimi, is considered by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to be one of the world’s major heroin traffickers. He was arrested in
Prosecutors are reluctant to express their discontent with the Romanian judiciary system because of a provision in the Magistrates Ethical Code that prohibits them from “challenging the moral probity of their colleagues." In October 2008, prosecutor Maximilian Balasescu was charged with breaking provisions of the Code because he talked to "Jurnalul National," a Bucharest-based newspaper, about an organized crime group set free by the judges. "With the laws we have in Romania and such judgments, I would rather quit and become a thief. I'm smarter than the thieves and, anyway, if I get caught I’ll be set free by the judge." said Balasescu.
He was unhappy with a judge’s ruling that allowed what he deemed a “very violent organized crime group” to walk free from the courtroom. After a lengthy investigation, the prosecution had charged the group with kidnapping, attempted murder and assault.
Gaps in the Laws
After one collaboration between the DEA and Romanian police that resulted in arrests, all but one suspect walked free, and that suspect was detained less than a month. In 2008, in another major trans-continental operation, the DEA informed Romanian police of their ongoing investigation of a criminal group led by a Ukrainian citizen, Nikolai Dozortsev, also known as Colea. Colea was operating out of New York and was coordinating a network involved in drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling cigarettes into the United States, Hong Kong, Spain, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Poland, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Romania. Running the network in
Florentin Robescu, the chief of the law enforcement unit that fights trans-border crime, said, "We are here facing one of the biggest legislative issues when it comes to combating smuggling. The act of illegally introducing cigarettes into the country through border points is not considered smuggling. It is only smuggling if it goes through areas outside the border points, if it goes through the green area. If you cross through the frontier station it isn't considered smuggling and you’re only fined for a misdemeanor. We proposed on three occasions that the law be changed but to no avail."
Unprotected Witness
Another complaint among Romanian law enforcement for years has been the lack of a dependable witness protection program. British prosecutor Alan Bacarese, who is implementing an anti-corruption program in