Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis criticized ruling party leader Liviu Dragnea for promoting fake news after Dragnea tried to deflect public attention from a scandal linking to him to older scandals involving Iohannis.

“A felon, Dragnea, has reached the top of the state and he is progressing not in rule of law but in fake news. What he presented yesterday are fake news,” Iohannis said on Tuesday, November 6, according to local Hotnews.ro.

He added that Dragnea is desperate and that’s why he is trying to manipulate public opinion.

The dispute started after Rise Project, a local investigation journalism platform, announced on Saturday that it came into possession of a suitcase with sensitive documents belonging to managers of local construction company Tel Drum, which is at the center of a corruption and EU fund fraud investigation also targeting Dragnea. The journalists claimed that the respective documents had been hidden from the anticorruption prosecutors.

On Monday, Liviu Dragnea came to the Parliament with two suitcases. One contained donuts, Dragnea’s way of saying Rise Project’s revelations were lies, and the other one had mock-files referencing to past scandals involving president Klaus Iohannis.

The dispute between the ruling party and president Klaus Iohannis entered a new phase after justice minister Tudorel Toader asked for the dismissal of Romania’s General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar and suggested that president Klaus Iohannis appointed him for this position in 2016 after Lazar closed a case involving Iohannis himself. However, it turned out that another prosecutor named Cristian Lazar had closed the respective case, according to local media reports.

Iohannis also made the first statement yesterday about the request to dismiss Augustin Lazar. He said that justice minister Tudorel Toader has been acting “besides the law” both when in the matter of the general prosecutor’s dismissal as in the matter of the nomination he made for the position of chief prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), local Stirileprotv.ro reported.

Toader sent Iohannis the nomination of Adina Florea for head of DNA although the Superior Magistracy Council (CSM) advised against it.

Request for general prosecutor’s dismissal sparks big scandal in Romania

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Presidency.ro)