Mircea Vlasa, the mayor of the Romanian village of Pungesti, a place which became famous after local revolts against shale gas exploration, is being investigated by the police for abuse of office and forged documents. The investigation is probing how the mayor got the property title for the land he later leased to oil company Chevron for the same shale gas exploration which triggered the local revolts.

Local news agency Mediafax reports that the mayor of Pungesti is targeted by the investigation conducted by policemen from the Fraud Investigation Service (SIF). His wife owns the two-hectare piece of land which she received in 2005, when her husband was also mayor.

“A person from Pungesti filed a complaint at the Prosecutor of the Court of Appeal Iasi, asking to establish the legality of the ownership transfer for a land in Pungesti, belonging to the family of mayor Mircea Vlasa,” Mihaela Straub, spokesman of Vaslui County Police, told Mediafax.

In November last year, over 1,000 people filed at the Vaslui Prefecture the documents needed for a referendum on the Mayor’s dismissal. Back then, they wanted him dismissed as he had leased the land  where Chevron is to start the exploration of shale gas.

In their request, the villagers said the mayor no longer represented local interests, as he had not consulted the locals on shale gas exploration in their village.

However, last week, the Vaslui Prefecture rejected the locals’ request for a referendum.

Several protests against Chevron’s exploration of shale gas were staged in Romania last year. The protests were triggered by concerns that exploration would be harmful to the environment, and coincided with protests against gold mining in Central Romania, at Rosia Montana, where the planned used of cyanide also caused concern.

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