Prime Minister asks competent authorities to investigate any form of press intimidation

Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca is asking the competent authorities to investigate any form of press intimidation, and that the offenders are held accountable, said the government's spokesman Dan Carbunaru, Agerpres reports.

"The government of Romania fully supports the freedom of the press. Romania is a democratic country where the right to information and the freedom of expression are sacred. Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca is asking the competent authorities to investigate any form of press intimidation and hold the offenders accountable," the government's spokesman said.

Acting Chairman of the Save Romania Union (USR) Catalin Drula on Monday called on Prime Minister Ciuca to no longer block the investigation into plagiarism accusations over Ciuca's doctoral thesis, after journalist Emilia Sercan complained in a Facebook post that she has been targeted by a "smear and intimidation campaign" ever since she exposed the Prime Minister's academic plagiarism, on January 18.

"I have decided to publicly denounce the smear and intimidation actions I have been subjected to since January 18, 2022, the day when I revealed that the doctoral thesis of the Prime Minister of Romania, Nicolae Ciuca, is plagiarized. I made this decision because the key player in this operation is the Romanian state itself: a piece of evidence that I provided to the Romanian Police for them to identify the perpetrator of a privacy violation act was leaked on the same day and later became the source of a large operation of kompromat. I gave the criminal investigation authorities - Prosecutor's Office and Police - time to investigate the information leak I complained of on February 18, 2022. For 45 days I was not even heard in the case opened following my complaint over the information leak and for 19 days the Prosecutor's Office and the Police refused to give me the registration number of the criminal case!," Sercan wrote.