April 5, 2013

 

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

The Public Information and Press Relations Bureau within the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice is authorized to bring to public knowledge the following:

 

 

 

Prosecutors from the Criminal Investigation and Criminalistics Section within the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice finished the investigations in the case known in the media as “referendum frauds” in Bolintin Vale and launched, on April 5, 2013, the criminal prosecution against the defendants CEAUªU DUMITRA and PRODAN NICULAE for the offence provided by Article 55 (1) of the Law No. 3 of 2000, namely for having introduced into the ballot box more voting bulletins than the actual number of votes casted by the electors, or for having forged by various means documents of the election board.

The indictment shows the following:

At the National Referendum of July 29, 2012, the defendant Ceauºu Dumitra, in the capacity of president of the polling station of Bolintin Vale, the Ilfov County, forged the supplementary list pertaining to the mobile ballot box certifying it through her signature although the list contained false entries, namely a number of 10 persons were entered twice on the list.

Also, on the same occasion, the defendant Prodan Niculae, in the capacity of member of the same ballot section election board in Bolintin Vale, whose task was to take the mobile ballot box to the domicile of the electors on the supplementary list, forged the said list allowing other persons, including himself, to sign the list in place of several of those actually mentioned on the list, and then introduced an equal number of voting bulletins into the ballot box.

To sum up, the indictment prepared by the prosecutors shows that 130 votes representing  20% of the total number of votes were casted illegally.

The case falls under the jurisdiction of the Bolintin Vale Local Court.

We would like to point out that, according to the criminal procedure Code, this phase of the criminal proceedings represents the end of the criminal inquiry and the launching of the criminal prosecution, which does not override the presumption of innocence principle.