Romania's justice courts have had a busy start to the year. After sentencing former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase to prison, the court issued a three-year prison sentence to former Agriculture Minister Decebal Traian Remes, for corruption. Remes was indicted in 2008 by the Anti-Corruption prosecutors, who accused the former minister of taking a bribe from businessman Gheorghe Ciorba. Ciorba, who turned informer, was sentenced to a year and a half in jail. The businessman gave the then Agriculture Minister Remes EUR 15,000 and food products – sausages and traditional alcoholic beverage 'palinca' - through a former Agriculture Minister, Ioan Muresan, who also received a three-year jail sentence. The bribe was for helping the businessman's son win two public auctions. Decebal Traian Remes was the country's Agriculture Minister in 2007, when he resigned following a media scandal, after footage of him receiving the bribe that eventually brought him the jail sentence was released.

Former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase was sentenced at the end of January to two years in prison following a case dubbed the “Quality Trophy’. He was accused of having financed his election campaigns with funds collected for the symposium ‘Quality Trophy’, organized by the State Inspectorate for Quality in Construction. The court’s decision can be further appealed.

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