Senate's Manda: SRI says first piece of info on African swine fever sent in June 2016

President of the Oversight Committee for the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) Claudiu Manda stated that SRI head Eduard Hellvig maintained he had conveyed the first piece of information related to the danger of the African swine fever to the legal beneficiaries in June 2016. 

"A topic circulated in the public space for a quite some time. There have been questions (...) whether SRI had duties, whether it did its job and informed the beneficiaries. SRI's response was (...) that it enters its area of competence. The SRI leadership informed us the first piece of information they had and sent to legal beneficiaries was in June 2016, when they were forecasting that at the border, in relation to wild boars, there is the risk for the African swine fever to appear. The briefings were at prime minister level, ministers, ANSVSA [National Sanitary Veterinary Food Safety Authority, e.n.]. A total number of 132 briefings were carried out by August 2018, both to the local and central structures. (...) The first outbreak was discovered in 2017, somewhere in Satu Mare. (...) SRI considers it was within its remit and it executed its mission to inform legal beneficiaries about this danger. Decisions and actions are within the competence of the authorities established by the law," Manda said on Thursday, after the SRI head Eduard Hellvig's hearing in the Committee.