Four liberals from Toboliu Commune, Bihor County – councilor Teofil Lucian Pușcaș, his colleague Ionel Ciprian Csatari, PNL candidate for the Local Council, but ineligible, and the spouses Dana and Viorel Domian, owners of the slaughterhouse in Girișu de Criș – were sent to court on charges of corrupting voters, according to eBihoreanul.
The defendants allegedly paid the voter for a vote. PHOTO Shutterstock
In the indictment made public at the request of the Oradean publication, the prosecutors show that, on the evening of June 7 last year, two days before the local elections, the four called a local man to Domian’s farm, for a discussion with an electoral theme.
The liberals wanted to convince the man to support Gheorghe Oșvat, the PNL candidate for mayor, in exchange for 700 lei. The amount would have been paid to the voter the same evening: at 11 p.m., Csatari would have appeared at the man’s home and handed him the money.
What the liberals did not know is that, before going to the meeting with them, the man stopped at the PSD mayor of the commune, Adrian Petru Crăciun, who was running for a new mandate, in the fight with the liberal Gheorghe Oșvat.
“During the campaign, I kept being told that there were people in the Roma colony, that they were counting them, that they wanted to buy their vote, but I didn’t believe it. Then Roma also came to tell me that they were being offered money. But when one of them came back and told me that they called him to the meeting, I told him to record it. And he did”Crăciun reported.
The next day, the man returned to the mayor with the evidence.
Crăciun and the voter bought by the political opponents went together to the Police and handed over the registration, the statement and the money, minus the cost of a pack of cigarettes, which the man had bought from the amount collected, eBihoreanul reports.
“I can’t accept something like this. Neither this kind of people, nor this kind of facts. I gave them everything, I went to the statements, but I don’t know more, because they didn’t tell us anything.” stated Crăciun, claiming that he personally filed the complaint regarding the attempted electoral fraud.
Adrian Petru Crăciun won the elections with 754 votes (56.23%), while the liberal Gheorghe Oşvat got only one place in the City Council.
“The amounts were also discussed, but nothing was given”
The liberal Teofil Pușcaș claims that he only learned from the Bihorean that he is to be summoned to the trial, as a defendant, and states that “there was no criminal act, only electoral campaign”.
“That man, who had put the tape recorder in his underwear, was telling us that the PSD offered them so much, that we give how much? We also discussed the amounts, but nothing was given. I will sue everyone, the police and the prosecutor, if they claim that I gave something. I didn’t give anything“, Pușcaș declared for the quoted source
Gheorghe Oșvat, the PNL candidate on whose behalf the money was allegedly offered, says, for the quoted source, that he learned of the whole story only when his colleagues ended up being investigated: “I didn’t know anything. You realize that I would have stopped them.”
