SRI General Dumitru Dumbravă, indicted by DNA prosecutors for acts of corruption, became known in the public space nine years ago, as a result of some controversial statements regarding justice and the collaboration of the judicial system with SRI.
SRI General Dumitru Dumbravă, accused of influence peddling Photo: qmagazine.ro
SRI General Dumitru Dumbravă, former head of the Legal Department of the Romanian Intelligence Service, was placed in reserve in September 2018, by a decree signed by President Klaus Iohannis.
In 2015, Dumitru Dumbravă became known in the public space after he stated in an interview for the juridice.ro publication that justice is a tactical field for the SRI, and that it would be “engaged” alongside other structures, provoking more critics.
“The phenomenon of corruption, as a threat to national security, entered the SRI portfolio relatively recently. (…) The engagement of the SRI in this fight, after all, for the moral sanation of society was done as a support structure for the judicial authorities with attributions in the matter (…). Concretely, if a few years ago we considered that we had achieved our objective with the notification of the PNA, for example, if later we withdrew from the tactical field with the notification of the court through the indictment, appreciating (naively we could say now) that our mission was concluded, we currently maintain our interest/attention until the final resolution of each case. This way of working, in which we are engaged alongside prosecutors, police officers, judges, workers of the DGA or other similar structures, has also brought to light aspects related to the corruption of the judicial system, within limits that should not be tolerated, but neither exaggerated“, stated Dumbrava.
The General of the SRI later explained that he was not talking about influencing justice, but rather the fact that (…) the defendants could influence the act of justice and that in this sense it was an attribute and an involvement of the SRI.
In 2017, Dumitru Dumbravă was heard in the Control Commission, demanding his resignation from the position of general secretary of the Service, in order to continue the Commission's activity in a proper way, being accused of having controlled a network of judges.
Former SRI officer Daniel Dragomir wrote on his blog about the “network” of magistrates of General Dumitru Dumbravă.
Dumbravă's name was also invoked by the former Minister of Tourism, Elena Udrea, at the hearing in the SRI Commission, along with those of George Maior and Florian Coldea, in the context of the reports on the “parallel state”, “the corridors of Justice” and “the corridors of the media “.
Traffic of influence
SRI General Dumitru Dumbravă was indicted, on Friday, by the DNA prosecutors, for acts of corruption, together with the former operative head of SRI Florian Coldea, after they were heard for several hours.
The prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate – Anti-corruption Section ordered the initiation of criminal proceedings and the taking of judicial control on bail, starting on May 24, 2024, against four people, namely two former soldiers, currently associated in within some companies, a lawyer from the Bucharest Bar and a person without special status, for the commission of influence peddling crimes, the form of criminal participation being authorship and complicity.
It is about Florian Coldea, Dumitru Dumbravă and the lawyer Doru Trăilă are defendants in the file regarding the crimes of influence peddling and money laundering and they have 7 days to pay the bail of 500,000 lei each in order to remain under judicial control, but and a fourth person.
“In the orders of the prosecutors, it is stated that “in the period March 2023 – April 2024, three of the defendants (the two businessmen and the lawyer from the Bucharest Bar Association) allegedly demanded the sum of 700,000 euros from a businessman (the witness in question) plus VAT, in exchange for which it would be believed that he would have influence on some magistrates in some courts and that he could cause them to pronounce favorable judgments for the witness in a criminal case in which he was being tried. After several negotiations, the amount that would have been claimed by the defendants was reduced to 600,000 euros plus VAT, and it was determined that it would be remitted in three equal installments. In the context mentioned above, during the same period, the witness would have remitted to the three defendants a partial payment in the amount of approximately 100,000 euros“, it is stated in the report of the DNA prosecutors.
