Bucharest District 2 mayor Neculai Ontanu will spend the next 30 days in jail, following a ruling of the Bucharest Court of Appeal. His accomplices, lawyer Loredana Radu and the secretary of Bucharest’s District 2 Local Council Toma Sutru, were also arrested in the same case.

The court ruling comes after prosecutors from the National Anticorruption Department DNA on Wednesday held Ontanu for 24 hours, on Wednesday, on bribery charges. He is fifth of the seven mayors in Bucharest who has been arrested in recent years. Bucharest’s mayor Sorin Oprescu, District 1 mayor Andrei Chiliman, District 5 mayor Marian Vanghelie, and District 4 mayor Cristian Popescu Piedone have spent at least a day in arrest in the last two years, on charges of corruption.

According to DNA, between 2006 and 2007, Ontanu allegedly received a 1,500 sqm land plot, to help a litigious rights owner get into possession of several land plots totaling 8.35 hectares. The plots were located on Barbu Vacarescu boulevard in District 2, run by mayor Ontanu.

The 1,500 sqm land plot was part of the 8.35 hectares for which Ontanu signed the property title.

According to the local media, Romanian businessman Cristian Borcea was the person who got the property title. He is also the one who denounced the mayor.

Borcea is currently serving time. He was sentenced to six years and four months in jail in 2014, in a case which targeted illegal transfers of football players. 

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com