Former anti-graft prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi, prosecuted over criminal group formation

Prosecutors with the Judiciary Crime Investigation Section have ordered that the prosecution of the former Chief Prosecutor of the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA), Laura Codruta Kovesi, be further carried out, for having committed offenses related to the establishment of an organised criminal group in its way of coordination (...) and complicity in the unfair repression in the form of improper participation. 

According to a press release issued by the Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice (PICCJ) on March 7, 2019, the suspect was informed of the prosecution being further carried out. 

"The deeds under investigation consist of the fact that, throughout the exercise of the term of office of chief prosecutor at the National Anti-corruption Directorate, during the period 2015-2016, she would have coordinated, through the actual activity carried out, by orders and provisions, the criminal group initiated by two prosecutors and an officer of the judiciary police, joined by three other prosecutors and another judicial police officer, and they would have acted in a coordinated manner for the purpose of committing offenses of abusive investigation, wrongful repression, influencing the statements, misleading the judicial bodies, intellectual forgery and use of forgery," informs a press release of the Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice (PICCJ) sent to AGERPRES on Friday. 

According to the investigators, the orders and provisions envisaged consist of a memo allowing for the possibility of hearing during the criminal prosecution of the same person, both as a witness with a protected identity and as a witness with a real identity, as well as in an order regarding the adoption of unitary practices in the administration of audio / video evidence at DNA level, an order that would have violated the provisions of art. 143 paragraph 2 and 4 of the Criminal Procedure Code, given that was ordered only the transmission to the courts of the evidence containing the relevant conversations in the respective case. 

"At the same time, through her conduct of hierarchical prosecutor, through the provisions she took on an act of referring the court by ignoring the reports of prosecutors with leadership positions within DNA - the Central Structure, she would have determined a department chief prosecutor to confirm, without guilt, an unlawful and unfounded indictment and would have thus ordered the indictment of five people, in whose case as many as four prosecutors had stated in writing that the arraignment is not required," reads the press release. 

Further carrying out the prosecution represents a stage of the criminal proceedings regulated by the Criminal Procedure Code, aimed at creating the procedural framework for taking the evidence, an activity that cannot override the principle of the presumption of innocence in any situation, the release says. 

On Thursday, the former head of DNA declared upon leaving from the Judiciary Crime Investigation Section that in the procedure informing her on the new accusations, all her procedural rights were violated by the magistrate who handles the new case, one of the procedural defect mentioned being that she had been given unsigned documents. 

"I would have liked to set the record straight today as regards these accusations, which are confabulations. (...) I sat in an office and police officers would walk by, informing me that I was charged in another case, while I was reading in the case file for which I came ...," Kovesi said. 

She announced she will challenge all procedural acts that did not observe the rigors of the law, after these are made available to her.