A former director of the FBI has called for dramatic action to restore the rule of law in Romania amid escalating concerns about how an anti-corrruption drive is eroding liberty and restricting freedom of expression.
Louis Freeh has produced a five-point plan for a nation that has made global headlines with allegations of secret protocols between Romania’s SRI secret intelligence service and institutions including the Romanian General Prosecutor and the Superior Council of Magistracy.
‘These secret protocols, hidden from the Romanian people and the legislature overseeing the SRI, represent a covert agreement to displace the rule of law by converting intelligence service officers into judicial agents,” he told me in an interview.
”They undermine the integrity and independence of the judicial system by unfairly helping the prosecutors and compromising the independence of magistrates.
“These secret pacts have sparked justifiable outrage in Romania, the European Union and the United States.”
The FBI Connection
Freeh, 68, served as FBI director for eight years after being appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, capping a career that started as a special agent and saw him to become an assistant United States attorney and district judge for the Southern District of New York.
He now acts as an independent consultant, through his company FGIS, including advising a Romanian defendant contesting his conviction by Romania’s DNA anti-corruption agency.
His comments come in a month that saw violence between police and protesters in Bucharest on August 10 and claims 11 days later by Liviu Dragnea, leader of the ruling Social Democratic Party, of a failed assassination attempt on him.
Dragnea said he was targeted in the attack last year by four foreign men who were paid by a “very famous man”.
However, the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime and Terrorism and the Romanian Intelligence Service all said they had no information about any attack.
The concerns about the anti-corruption drive have been flagged by parties including Human Rights Without Frontiers International, The European Commission for Democracy Through Law and Magistrats Européens pour la Démocratie et les Libertés, an association of European judges and public prosecutors.
Freeh believes they have hurt Romania’s economy, observing that the Business-Review EU reported last year that foreign direct investment from major investors declined in Romania last year, despite growing in Europe overall.
Five-Point Plan
He wants the Romania Government and its members of Parliament to oversee the following measures to remedy what he calls a “grave rule of law crisis.”
1) A pledge to commit to investigating and prosecuting corruption to the full extent of the law, but also within the law;
2) Relief for individuals who have been convicted without due process, with insufficient or unlawful evidence or under the protocols of conflicted judges;
3) The establishment of an independent commission of internationally-renowned judges and legal experts empowered and funded to investigate secret protocols, examine the operations of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the DNA, and Romania’s SRI intelligence service and make specific recommendations for reform;
4) A Government commitment to confidentially determine the judges who were subjects of “files” created while the protocols were in force to review the nature and duration of the allegations; and
5) The establishment of offices of professional responsibility for the Prosecutor General, the DNA and the SRI to review complaints against these agencies and their officers and set forth proper standards of conduct and accountability.
From “Gulag” To Democracy
“Romania has emerged from the ‘gulag’ of communist terror to become a democracy essential to the EU, NATO and the international community of liberty loving peoples” states Freeh.
“But, bedrock rule of law principles ensure the freedom and prosperity of every democratic nation and, in a global economy, foreign direct investment will increase only with the belief that robust legal systems can protect those assets.
“I am confident that the Romanian people and their leaders have the will, commitment and persistence to restore the rule of law for generations to come.”
During his time as FBI director, Freeh was the lead prosecutor in the “Pizza Connection” case, the largest and most complex investigation ever undertaken at the time by the United States Government.
The case involved an extensive drug-trafficking operation in the United States by Sicilian organized crime members who used pizza parlors as fronts.
Following the investigation, Freeh served as the federal government’s principal courtroom attorney in the 14-month trial and won the conviction of 16 of 17 co-defendants.
In 1990, he was appointed a special prosecutor by the Attorney General to oversee the investigation into the mail-bomb murders of Federal Judge Robert Vance of Birmingham, Alabama, and civil rights leader Robert Robinson of Savannah, Georgia.
This case became known as the VANPAC case. After extensive investigation, a suspect was apprehended, prosecuted and convicted.
Civil justice and human rights groups hope that his intervention in Romania’s public justice scandal can help bring international attention to bear on increasingly murky waters. This scandal has got much further to run.
