Save Romania Union (USR) deputy Emanuel Ungureanu warned his colleagues on Monday, during plenary debates to strip ex Health Minister Nelu Tataru of parliamentary immunity, that Liberal leader Nicolae Ciuca is actually standing by the side of people entrenched in a grand business corruption entanglement while „throwing Tataru under the bus” for some petty offenses.

„Mr. Ciuca, Iohannis’s strawman, sits unbothered next to two people tarnished with heavy shady business of millions of euros, and throws Nelu Tataru to the dogs for some chickens found in his refrigerator that he cannot justify. Meanwhile, DNA chief prosecutor Marius Voineag is also a crook who got into that position by covering up Mr. Ciuca’s plagiarism affair,” Ungureanu declared during the plenary debate on the Law Committee’s report approving the request for the IT and home search conducted in the case of deputy Nelu Tataru’s bribe-taking case.

„I’m not defending Mr. Tataru, but I assure you that the Husi hospital is not the fraud champion. There are many other hospitals controlled by a mafia, and where no control body sets foot because the prosecutors, in order to be able to get into a hospital in this system built by Rafila, Iohannis and Ciuca, need to make a phone call to catch a certain doctor red-handed, while the real harassment cases, the big shady affairs in the health system go unnoticed for years,” Ungureanu said.

AUR deputy Sorin Muncaciu said that Nelu Tataru has the right to defend himself in court, and that the lifting of immunity helps him prove his innocence.

„I think that Mr. Tataru should be punished for his activity during the pandemic. (…) During his term as a minister, Mr. Tataru contracted and bought millions of vials of vaccine, but what he didn’t tell you is the small print in the contract for the purchase of these vaccines – which states very clearly that these vaccines cannot be tested and cannot be analyzed. They are exclusively for direct injection. How is it possible for a Romanian minister to accept this?,” said Muncaciu.

The plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies approved on Monday the request of the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) to carry out computer and house searches in the case of former Liberal minister Nelu Tataru, who is accused of taking bribes.

AGERPRES