The Rompetrol Group (TRG) is once again firmly requesting that the General Prosecutor’s Office (GPO), headed by Ilie Botos, puts an end to the illegal practice of misinforming the public regarding the evolution and content of the criminal case brought against TRG shareholders and employees, as well as to leaking to the media undisclosed data and documents from the criminal investigation by selecting incomplete information and placing it out of context.
“We find out with surprise from public statements of GPO spokespeople, quoted on Wednesday by press agencies, that in the Rompetrol case “only procedural matters are still to be finalized” and that these items will be completed by next week when the investigation will end.
“The GPO prosecutors may not know that in the Rompetrol case witnesses are still being questioned and the expert reports ordered on February 9, 2006 and April 17, 2006 are not yet completed. Still uncompleted are the technical-scientific evaluations ordered on December 12, 2005 and March 14, 2006 respectively. Moreover, the criminal investigation procedural documents ordered through various rogatory commissions have not yet been drafted”, said attorney Cristian Iordanescu.
The GPO spokesperson is intentionally misinforming the public regarding the current stage of the investigation in the Rompetrol case, in an attempt to cover up the absolute nullity of the entire criminal investigation in the Rompetrol case caused by the “guilty” verdict announced on July 14 by the General Prosecutor, prior to the completion of the criminal investigation.
Perhaps both the General Prosecutor and the case prosecutors consider irrelevant the results of the technical–scientific reports and of the expert reports respectively, as ordered in this case and meant to clarify the charges that could be imputed to those accused. The prosecutors may have already reached the judicial truth they are bound to uncover during the entire course of the criminal investigation. The witness hearings still scheduled to take place in this case are probably not important for the prosecutors, nor is any piece of evidence that could be presented by the accused, or which could be included in the file following the ongoing criminal investigation activities ordered by the same case prosecutors.
“We also notice with regret that the same “judicial sources” have already disseminated to the media parts of the trial charges already finalized but not yet communicated to the accused, since the criminal investigation is not yet completed. The criminal investigation documents were not yet presented to the accused, so as to enable them to benefit from presenting their evidence and defence in reply to the incriminating evidence collected by the case prosecutors against them. We are once again faced with finding out from the media the final charges which should normally be formulated after the completion of the criminal investigation and after a solution in the case has been decided, be it by formalizing the charge sheet and send the case to trial, or by closing the criminal investigation” added Iordanescu.
We are once again requesting, while hoping not in vain, that the case prosecutors be allowed to continue undeterred the criminal investigation, benefiting from the professional independence without which completing an impartial investigation is impossible. We hope at the same time that the accused will be allowed to formulate the relevant evidence as part of the legal exercise of defence and within the procedural framework that bounds the prosecutors to observe the presumption of innocence, compulsory in any criminal case.