New Allegations of Judicial Misconduct Are Yet Another Blow to Romania’s Beleaguered Justice System

The Romanian justice system, which has struggled under the weight of repeated corruption scandals, was dealt yet another devastating blow to its already shaky reputation in January. A retired judge, Corneliu-Bogdan Ion-Tudoran, has been brought up on charges of abuse of office and wrongful conviction pertaining to his conduct on the Bucharest Court of Appeals. Specifically, Judge Tudoran allegedly engaged in criminal conduct in connection with the Băneasa real estate development case, which came before him while he was on the bench.


According to the indictment, the retired judge is accused of fabricating evidence to justify his ruling to confiscate buildings and land from a defendant. Furthermore, Tudoran is alleged to have furnished the reasons that seemingly justified his ruling more than a year after it had been handed down. To make matters worse, Judge Tudoran is accused of having post-written that critical document after he was no longer on the bench and—even still worse—was interred as a patient at a psychiatric hospital. The retired judge’s statement had to be delivered to the Romanian High Court by the retired judge’s son, who provided a copy that had been saved to a memory stick.


The litany of allegations against the retired judge does not end there either. Extensive swaths of the post-ruling document that the judge claims to have written appear to have been lifted directly from the indictment drafted by prosecutor in the case, Nicolae Marin, who has also come under legal review for alleged improprieties and other abuses of office in this case.


The charges that have been brought against the retired judge, Tudoran, are only the most recent scandal to have roiled the Romanian justice system, which has long been accused by its critics as being rife with corruption. Other recent allegations of corruption within the Romanian justice system include the controversial conviction of Attorney Robert Rosu in December 2020, a conviction that was described by the president of the Union of Romanian Bar Associations as an act of intimidation designed to deter lawyers from providing proper representation to their clients. Allegations of corruption were also made after Laura Codruta Kovesi, formerly Romania’s principal anti-corruption officer, was found by the European Court of Human Rights to have been denied fair trial and of being silenced by the Romanian authorities, which forced her from office.


At all events, the ever-increasing scope of criticism that Romania’s justice system has come under cannot be easily dismissed as baseless claims being made by partisan forces with a political axe to grind. The European Union has also repeatedly voiced its concerns about the integrity of Romania’s justice system and its compliance with the EU’s strict anticorruption requirements. Similarly, the United Nations has given voice to grave reservations about the professionalism and impartiality of the Romanian justice system, with particular emphasis on the conduct of judges and prosecutors. The most recent allegations against Tudoran and Marin would appear to lend further credence to the critics’ view.