Romania Suffers From a ‘Signature Strike’

In August, Ion Tiriac, a former professional tennis and hockey player-turned-businessman, summoned reporters to tell them he was shelving plans to donate €2 million ($2.2 million) to build a new ice rink in Bucharest. Tiriac told journalists he had spent more than two years trying to line up the necessary government approvals, but a sweeping crackdown on corruption has made civil servants reluctant to sign even routine documents. “They are afraid to even breathe because it may lead to the anticorruption prosecutors’ office,” the businessman says he was told.

Romania’s anticorruption agency is reviewing more than 10,000 cases, and hundreds of public officials are facing criminal trials, the result of a campaign spearheaded by Laura Codruta Kovesi, an aggressive prosecutor who was appointed to lead the department in 2013. The operation, reminiscent of Italy’s nationwide Clean Hands campaign in the 1990s, has brought down several high-ranking politicians, including former Prime Minister Victor Ponta, who resigned in November after being charged with money laundering and complicity in tax fraud; former Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu, who was arrested in September and charged with bribe-taking; and former Finance Minister Darius Valcov, who resigned last March amid allegations that he used funds obtained through influence-peddling to amass a hidden cache of gold bars and paintings by Picasso and Andy Warhol. All three have denied the charges against them.