Former Baia Mare Mayor Catalin Chereches has sued Romania with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), claiming that he did not receive a fair trial in a case in which he was convicted of corruption, his lawyer Razvan Doseanu said on Tuesday.

„Why the ECHR? Because those domestic appeals, which we have used so far have been denied. We still have an ongoing appeal for annulment at the Cluj Court of Appeal, with a deadline of April 5th, which is exactly the file for which we requested today and the Supreme Court of Justice and Cassation ruled on a request for relocation (…) He certainly did not have a fair trial and was convicted, according to the defence, by a judge in a state of incompatibility and, in addition, there are other grounds mentioned in the application lodged with the ECHR. There is a Chereches versus Romania case (…) We are not interested in damages, we are interested in finding exactly that Mr Catalin Chereches had his right to a fair trial violated against, and that there were other rights violated during the criminal investigation and subsequent trial in the first instance and appeal in Cluj,” Razvan Doseanu, lawyer to Chereches, told a television broadcaster.

The announcement came after Chereches lodged with the Cluj Court of Appeal an appeal for annulment against his conviction, but on Tuesday he requested the Supreme Court to change the venue of his trial.

He believes that the case, in which he requests that his appeal for annulment be taken up, should not be resolved by the colleagues of the judge who was part of the panel that sentenced him definitively to five years in prison.

On November 24, 2024, Chereches was sentenced by the Cluj Court of Appeal to five years in prison for bribery.

AGERPRES