A judge from the Bucharest Court of Appeal intervened on Thursday during a press conference convened by the court’s leadership and stated that everything one of her colleagues said in the Recorder documentary is true.

„The leadership does not help us in any way. We are simply terrorised with disciplinary actions,” judge Raluca Morosanu said.

„My name is Raluca Morosanu. I am a judge with the First Criminal Division of the Bucharest Court of Appeal. I have 26 years of service as a magistrate, 19 of which at the Bucharest Court of Appeal. I came here to support my colleague Laurentiu Besu and to say that everything he said there is true. If he is contradicted, it is a lie. Here, at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, we work very hard. The leadership does not help us in any way. We are simply terrorised with disciplinary actions and with everything you know is happening to us. I do not even want to tell you what the atmosphere is like and in what toxic and tense conditions we are working. Some of my colleagues agree with me; I do not know what the others will do; here you can see some who will probably support the leadership. As a side note – I have never been an undercover officer, nor with ‘Doi si un sfert’, nowhere. I have been a magistrate all my life. Colleagues across the country know me, as I have also been a trainer at the National Institute of Magistracy and at the National School for Court Clerks for nearly 15 years. They will know I am not lying; if they do not believe colleague Laurentiu, at least they should believe me. That is all I could say,” the magistrate stated at the start of the conference.

In the documentary „Justitie capturata” (Captured Justice), judge Laurentiu Besu makes disclosures about serious misconduct at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, where he served for a period after being seconded from the Giurgiu Tribunal, having been told later by colleagues that he had been moved in order to remove him from the panel hearing the corruption case of surgeon Mircea Beuran. Judge Besu further discloses that his secondment at the Court of Appeal was extended several times, until this spring, when he was assigned to a panel hearing an appeal in the case of Niculae Badalau; after delivering a dissenting opinion, he was informed by the section chief that his secondment would not be renewed. AGERPRES