Ramnicu Valcea Mayor Acquitted By Supreme Court In Decade-Long Bribery Case

The mayor of Romanian city Ramnicu Valcea, Mircia Gutau, was acquitted of all charges in a final decision issued by the country’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, in a case where he was initially sentenced to prison for bribery, but was reopened following a ECHR decision.

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The court rejected an appeal made by anticorruption prosecutors to its initial decision of clearing Gutau of the charges, with Tuesday’s ruling being final.

The Supreme Court decided at the beginning of April to reopen the case, admitting a request in this regard filed by the mayor, based on an ECHR decision which stated that Mircia Gutau’s rights to defense and a fair trial were violated in the initial trial.

The Romanian Ecologist Party mayor was sentenced in 2010 to three years and six months in prison, also by the Supreme Court, whofound him and his former deputy Nicolae Dicu guilty of requesting a EUR50,000 bribe from the owner of a local business, in exchange for issuing an urbanism certificate.

Following a denunciation by the owner, anticorruption prosecutors caught Dicu in the act of receiving half of the sum in July 2006, with Gutau arrested several days latter.

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