Few countries can claim a sitting prime minister as one of the 1,250 public officials indicted for corruption in a single year. Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), the agency responsible for the crackdown, has made a deep impact in a country rife with public malfeasance and mismanagement. Its actions have been hailed by citizens, investors and Romania’s EU and U.S. allies, who welcome evidence that the country is getting to grips with its problems.

The same can’t be said of Romania’ssouthern neighbor, Bulgaria, long plagued by political instability and an inability to crack down on crime. It marks a divergence for two countries that have often been lumped together as examples of the consequences of an over-hasty EU enlargement. Both joined the EU in 2007, despite widespread views that their legal and political institutions that were unprepared for the rigors of membership. Bulgaria has the highest perceived corruption among the 28 EU countries, while Romania is third worst, just ahead of Italy, according to the latest Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International. But unlike Bulgaria, Romania is inching lower on the list.

Haemorrhage of cases

Although both countries are part of a corruption monitoring scheme led by the European Commission, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently praised Romania’s efforts, stating in February that the oversight would end in 2019.

The DNA had a record year in 2015, so much so that it is struggling with its caseload. As well as former prime minister Victor Ponta — who resigned in November — the agency indicted five other ministers, 21 members of the combined houses of parliament, and Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu. It ordered the seizure of nearly half a billion euros. Ponta was indicted for forgery, money laundering and being an accessory to tax evasion in September. He resigned less than two months later as pressure mounted in the wake of a deadly nightclub fire blamed on lax implementation of regulations, undermined by official corruption. “Politicians should wake up and realize that it’s time to do something about it, or else they will all end up in jail,” Laura Ştefan, who was instrumental in reinvigorating the DNA as the director of the ministry of justice from 2005 to 2007, told POLITICO. “We have a hemorrhage of people under investigation. They have to change their way of doing business, or kill the DNA. Or else they’ll all end up in jail.”

Ştefan’s ex-boss, former justice minister Monica Macovei, said the DNA should serve as an example for other countries. “It’s a model for the region, but not only the region, for all Europe, as it works extremely well,” Macovei said. Macovei, now an MEP, said the DNA’s rebooting on her watch was thanks partly to robust support from President Traian Băsescu, as well as a window of opportunity in the run-up to Romania’s EU accession in January 2007. During this period, Brussels put pressure on Romania and Bulgaria to bring their institutions up to EU standards, pressure that waned after accession.

While the EU and others tend to put an emphasis on institution-building, Macovei insisted that it’s people who make the difference, both politicians like herself and Băsescu and prosecutors like DNA head Kövesi.

Bulgaria struggles

By contrast, Bulgaria has not developed any anti-corruption institution with the same effectiveness as the DNA, despite having had the same “window of opportunity” as Romania. An alphabet soup of agencies have been created, sidelined, and then replaced. In September, parliament rejected the establishment of a new unit to tackle high-level corruption. Last month, the government proposed a bill that would unite four anti-corruption agencies into a single powerful bureau.

“Our analysis has shown that so far measures have not been focused on the people in power and we all realize that if you manage to eradicate corruption at the top, this will have an immense effect on the whole system,” Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva, who is overseeing the legislation, told POLITICO. But critics do not expect any new Bulgarian anti-corruption body to have the power of the DNA, and say that an elite of politicians and oligarchs continues to act with impunity in Bulgaria, sometimes with the connivance of parts of the judiciary.

Hristo Ivanov, who resigned as Bulgaria’s justice minister in December largely due to frustration with parliament’s unwillingness to reform the prosecution, predicted Kuneva’s efforts would run up against deep structural challenges, and would likely result in a second-tier organization dealing only with mid-level corruption, leaving the elite untouched. “Corruption in Bulgaria is not merely a matter of isolated individual actions, but of well-organized networks echeloned in the economic, political, media and judicial sectors,” he said.

That sort of structure carries the danger of the prosecutor’s office becoming entangled in politics and corruption, he warned. “Unless you have decisive action to investigate and punish corruption, particularly at the highest level, we are not going to see any dramatic change in institutional culture that it looks like you have in Romania.”

Even sources within the government admit that anticorruption legislation has been undermined by MPs’ fear being investigated.

Secret ties

For some of the more conspiratorially-minded on both sides of the Danube, the secret to the DNA’s success lies in its relationship with the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) — and, more sinisterly, the infrastructure, networks, and modus operandi it inherited from its feared Communist-era predecessor, the Securitate.

Many Romanians feel that a “deep state” linked to the Securitate’s network still pulls the strings behind the scenes in their country.

Commentator Dan Tapalagă said that the SRI has been “crucial” in the DNA’s success. He said that while there is a “huge difference” between the Securitate and the SRI, increases in the latter’s powers are concerning. “We don’t know what they are doing with their tremendous power, we don’t have real mechanisms to control those secret services. Parliamentary control is fake,” said Tapalagă. He felt the DNA would have greater legitimacy using the regular police apparatus instead of relying on the intelligence service.

Macovei and Ştefan said there is nothing unusual about the DNA’s relationship with the security services, and Macovei argued that the Securitate is long gone, having been officially abolished in 1989. The Communists’ successor party, the ruling social democratic PSD, has been more affected by the DNA’s actions than its rivals — and accuses the DNA of leading a politicized witch hunt. But both data and individual high-profile cases suggest that this is not necessarily the case, as many opposition figures have been indicted.

Indeed, the DNA’s investigations have brought the agency into contact with Băsescu, an avowed foe of the PSD, with both his brother and his political protégé, Elena Udrea, being indicted on corruption charges.

Revamping the DNA

The DNA’s links to Romania’s intelligence service are now under threat, following a March ruling by the Constitutional Court forbidding the agency from using evidence obtained by the SRI.

Kövesi, the DNA director, said that her agency will need 130 police officers and €10 million if it is to fill the gap left by the SRI, potentially slowing its work at a time when it has its largest-ever caseload. The court verdict has coincided with a significant beefing-up of the intelligence service’s investigative powers that could potentially allow it to take on some of the DNA’s work.

Macovei, the former justice minister, warned that politicians have long tried to find ways of weakening the DNA. “[MPs] did not give up — they tried again and again to escape investigations and the prosecutions that follow,” she said. “It’s a constant fight to keep these institutions. We need to be very vigilant the whole time as politicians keep trying to cut the powers of the DNA and to save themselves. It is like democracy — if you think it’s given to you forever, you can lose it overnight.”

POLITICO

15 April 2016