A Facebook post stirred up yesterday controversy among the members of the Union to Save Romania (USR) party, one of the youngest parties in Romania.

USR managed to rank third in the Sunday’s parliamentary elections after the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) and National Liberal Party (PNL), with a score of almost 9%. USR thus surpassed former President Traian Basescu’s Popular Movement Party (PMP), which got less than 6% of the votes, and former Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu’s Liberal Democratic Alliance (ALDE), which had a score of around 6%.

Moreover, USR was the most voted political party by the Romanians abroad, with a share of over 28% of the Diaspora votes, and came second in Bucharest (25%), Cluj-Napoca (22%), and Brasov (18%).

However, not all the party’s members were happy with the results. Romanian mathematician Sergiu Moroianu, one of the party’s founders and a friend of Nicusor Dan, the party’s president, wrote a Facebook post about the alleged mistakes and abuses made by the party’s “communication/campaign team” coordinated by Matei Paun, according to local News.ro.

Moroianu’s wife, Frenchwoman Clotilde Armand, is USR’s second most important member. She almost produced the biggest surprise of the local elections in June this year, when she was very close to being elected mayor in Bucharest’s District 1.

Despite her good result and growing popularity, USR’s communication coordinator Matei Paun allegedly led a campaign to “smear and sabotage Clotilde Armand, USR’s main image vector”, Moroianu claims. He says that Paun wanted to take over Armand’s Facebook page, which has close to 90,000 fans.

He also says that Matei Paun associated USR with the LGBT activists and the famous investor and philanthropist George Soros, which has led to a weaker than expected result for USR, including in Bucharest, where the party got less votes compared to the local elections this summer.

Moroianu also accuses Matei Paun of spending the party’s money on false and overpriced surveys and on “consultancy services” contracted without a tender and transparency. USR presented a poll at the end of November, which showed the party ahead of PNL with 19% of the intended vote.

Nicusor Dan, the mathematician and civil activist who founded the party, replied on Facebook that he was “sad and surprised that Sergiu Moroianu launched such false statements in the public space, many of them similar to the ones used by USR’s political enemies”. Nicusor Dan also said that Matei Paun “worked voluntarily, sacrificing his personal time” for the party’s campaign.

USR raised close to RON 1 million (EUR 220,000) in the pre-campaign period to finance its campaign, from some 3,000 donors. The party’s financers include local entrepreneurs and top executives. Most of the money was spent on campaign materials, such as flyers, letters, and paying the people who distributed the materials. The party also spent money on online advertising, on Facebook, Google, and on two polls.

The party will have at least 13 Senator and 30 Deputy seats in the new Parliament, according to its own estimates.

Matei Paun, the man who coordinated USR’s campaign communication, is a Romanian investment banker who started his career in the ‘90s, in Moscow, according to local Ziarul Financiar. In 2000, Paun founded his own investment banking firm, BAC Investment, which he expanded to several countries in the region. BAC Investment has worked on about EUR 2 million worth of M&A transactions in the region since its inception, according to information on its website.

Matei Paun’s name appeared in the Panama Papers documents earlier this year while some local media outlets wrote about Paun’s Facebook posts in recent years, in which he expressed his support for Russia and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

editor@romania-insider.com