Romanian minister calls for prosecutor's sacking, graft crackdown under threat

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS FEBRUARY 22, 2018 / 12:46 PM / UPDATED 12 MINUTES AGO

Romanian minister calls for prosecutor's sacking, graft crackdown under threat

Reuters Staff
4 MIN READ

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania’s Justice Minister called on Thursday for the country’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor to be dismissed for “excess of authority”, triggering street protests and potentially destabilizing a crackdown on graft.

Tudorel Toader read a summary of a 20-point report arguing for Laura Codruta Kovesi’s dismissal that he compiled himself, telling a news conference she was responsible for “acts and facts intolerable to the rule of law.”

She has led anti-corruption prosecution agency DNA since 2013 and, under her management, conviction rates have risen sharply in one of the European Union’s most corrupt states, winning plaudits from EU authorities in Brussels who have Romania’s justice system under special monitoring.

The country’s ruling Social Democrats tried a year ago to decriminalize several corruption offences by emergency decree, leading to its largest street protests in decades.

A judicial overhaul approved by the ruling coalition late last year - which was criticized by the president, thousands of magistrates, the European Commission and the U.S. State Department - is back in parliament after the Constitutional Court ruled some of its provisions were unconstitutional.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-romania-government/romanian-minister-calls-for-prosecutors-sacking-graft-crackdown-under-threat-idUSKCN1G62F2

[nocalflea]

1. The animals are getting restless.

Globally, organized crime seems to be taking hit after hit.

Politician after politician is being exposed.