Justice Minister Raluca Pruna on Monday said that dividing the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) technical service dealing with wiretappings into three services reporting to Prosecutor’s Office units – the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) and the General Prosecutor’s Office – isn’t the best solution economy-wise.
“We must have a debate and most likely dividing the existing SRI structure (…) into three units of the Prosecutor’s Office — DNA, DIICOT and the General Prosecutor’s Office — isn’t the most economy-wise advantageous solution. And this is not all, as this infrastructure, as far as I understand, (…) is not an object to be bought and once bought or set up no longer requires maintenance, it needs maintenance, and must be constantly updated, it is a very complex software, it is very difficult to have, in my opinion, three such technical services with the DNA, DIICOT and the General Prosecutor’s Office, and I am certain that, at the Public Prosecution Service level, there are talks to make it more efficient,” Pruna told Europa FM private radio broadcaster in an interview on Monday.
She mentioned that the Prosecutor’s offices heads have not complained about building cases with SRI wiretapping. The minister added that there is currently a paradox, as prosecutors cannot conclude the criminal prosecution and they must act so as to make this possible.
“I have seen in the public space that the DNA head prosecutor said that the anticorruption authority needs to consolidate its existing technical service, it must be said that the DNA is the only specialised structure needing something to start from; DIICOT head Horodniceanu also publicly explained what must be done to create a technical service, and the General Prosecutor’s Office is in the same situation,” Raluca Pruna said.
The Minister pointed out that an evaluation is yet to be done on the impact of Government Ordinance No 6/2016 issued following the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) ruling according to which the Criminal Procedure Code article that allowed the SRI to conduct wiretappings in the cases built by the DNA and other prosecutor’s offices was unconstitutional. More…