Radu Mazare, the former mayor of Constanta, Romania’s fifth-largest city and the country's biggest Black Sea port, was sentenced to 9 years and 10 months in prison for bribe taking by judges of the Supreme Court (ICCJ). The sentence can be appealed, local G4media.ro reported.

At the latest hearing, on January 25, the prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) asked for a 12-year sentence, the maximum one for the deeds.

Mazare, who is currently fugitive in Madagascar, also has to serve a final jail sentence of 9 years in prison, received in February this year. The former mayor fled to Madagascar in December 2017, and asked for political asylum.

The DNA sent this case to court at the beginning of December in 2015. According to the DNA, between 2006 and 2009, Radu Mazăre, with the help of local investor Sorin Strutinsky, asked for more than EUR 2 million, out of which he received EUR 1 million and RON 2.47 million (EUR 550,000), from representatives of two companies, in order to facilitate the issuance of urban planning decisions for commercial real estate projects that these companies intended to develop in Constanta.

In the same case judged by ICCJ on May 3, businessman Gabriel Strutinsky was sentenced to 7 years and 10 months in prison and former MP Eduard Martin, a shareholder in Polaris M Holding company, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison.

editor@romania-insider.com