“Interpol remains to do its job”

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The Minister of Justice, Alina Gorghiu, claims that the former president of Eximbank, Ionuţ Costea, cannot be brought to the country to serve his sentence, because “Interpol does not have the exact location”. This statement comes in the context in which Ionuț Costea was located in Turkey, at the beginning of 2024.

“Interpol has not identified the fugitive’s exact address, which is why we cannot start any legal proceedings in Turkey. This condition is mandatory. You have to know where it is exactly, precisely located. Interpol remains to do its job”, mentioned Alina Gorghiu, at Digi24.

Ionuţ Costea was definitively convicted in May 2023 for complicity in bribery, being located in Turkey in January of this year. He is the brother-in-law of Mircea Geoană.

What happens to other “runaways”

As ziare.com reported, Romania’s Ionel Arsene, Mario Iorgulescu and Paul Philippe are some of the fugitives who claimed in the courts of other countries that “there are no decent conditions” in Romania. Thus, they escaped, for the moment, the execution of the sentence in the country. Alina Gorghiu explained, for the cited source, that in the case of Arsene, the former president of the Iași County Council, convicted of corruption, the Italian courts will rule on a new report by the Romanian authorities in December of this year. More precisely, the magistrates from Italy must decide whether Romania has decent prison conditions.

“There will be a new assessment in December. We were asked for information about conditions in hospitals in Romanian penitentiaries, we communicated that the Romanian state meets the conditions and can treat depression and other diseases in the penitentiary system. In December there will be a confrontation in this field, we will see how the expertise sounds. The decision of the Italian authorities is to return the fugitive to the country”, said the minister Alina Gorghiu, for the quoted source.