At the same time, the lawyers’ guild stands up against the sentence by which one of Bucharest’s most reputable lawyers, Robert Red, was wrongly convicted, in the same file, to five years with execution only for representing his clients, which is unprecedented in the world of post-decembrist justice. The judgment of Judges Ionut Matei, Florentina Dragomir and Alina Ioana Ilie – koveşti, as Ion Cristoiu says – is all the more surprising since the two, Andronic and Red, had been acquitted by the first court. Lawyers across the country went into a fight accusing the High Court of the wrong decision. “A colleague has been sentenced to prison – and is already imprisoned as a criminal – just because he did his job,” a lawyer wrote online in the opinion of many other lawyers. “Strike, that’s what lawyers should do. Otherwise they will not succeed.” – is the opinion of Ion Cristoiu.
The head of the ICCJ, Alina Corina Corbu, jumped to defend her institution on HotNews. where he was published a communiqué telling us that the judges of the High Court are saints at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. However, the same HotNews, as well as Radio Free Europe, showed that Corina Corbu, who was sued by DNA in 2014 for complicity in favouring the offender, was in a dubious relationship with Claudia Silinescu Gherbovan, a lawyer with the Bucharest Bar, at the time of the facts, which, according to DNA, was accused of “complicity in bribery; complicity in money laundering; 2 money laundering offences; complicity in abuse of office against public interests, resulting in an undue benefit, for himself or for another; purchase of influence’. According to the DNA Indictment “On 5.04.2011 the defendant Pandrea Anton – President of the Criminal Section of the High Court of Cassation and Justice ordered the authorization of the interception of telephone calls in file No.82/P/2011 of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, and after this time told Corbu Corina Alina that Gherbovan Silinescu Claudia, lawyer and friend of hers, “is intercepted” (has the phones listened to). The circumstance was passed on by Corbu Corina Alina, so that it helped the persons concerned by the investigation to find out that they are the subject of a criminal investigation (…) In addition, finding out that the defendant Gherbovan Silinescu Claudia could be the subject of criminal investigations leads the defendant Puşoiu Iuliana to have a cautious attitude and to prepare “evidence” knowing that he was part of the same entourage, so that the production of evidence is a natural gesture of self-preservation.” HotNews reported at the time that the girlfriend of the current head of the BCCJ is the niece of former General Tudor Constantin Silinescu, former first deputy of the SIE, later an adviser to Prime Minister Adrian Nastase on security and intelligence services, who died in October 2007. The name of lawyer Claudia Silinescu Gherbovan is also quoted in an official discussion in the Romanian Parliament. The website of the Chamber of Deputies records that in 1999 Claudia Silinescu Gherbovan was removed from criminal prosecution along with other judges in an investigation into illegal adoptions in Romania and the disappearance of some files. See details here, hotnews offered in the same article. All these small details did not bother the President of Cotroceni to sign in July 2018 the decree appointing Judge Corina-Alina Corbu as President of the Administrative and Fiscal Dispute Section of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, for a period of 3 years, according to a communiqué of the Presidential Administration.
ICCJ
PRESS COMMUNICATE
Regarding positions expressed in the public environment by several professional organisations
lawyers, as regards the solution of convicting a person who has the status of
by a panel of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, positions adopted before the
to know the considerations of the decision in question, despite its finality, and
based solely on the arguments favourable to the person concerned, also taking into account the obligation to
judges in terms of public communication, the supreme court intends to
strongly recall the following:
“Justice is performed by judges in the name of the law, is unique, impartial and equal
for all.” (Article 2(2)) shall be replaced by the following: (1) of Law No 304/2004).
“Judges are independent and subject only to the law” (art.124 para. 3) of the Constitution
Romania) and “(…) are obliged (…) to ensure the rule of law, to respect the rights and freedoms of
persons, as well as their equality before the law and to ensure legal treatment
non-discriminatory treatment of all participants in judicial proceedings, regardless of the
(Article 4(1)( 1) of Law No.303/2004 republished, with amendments and additions
subsequent). read more: comunicat de presa 19.12.2020
By
Robert Williams
Editor in Chief