In the letter, Catalin Sandu accuses Daniel Constantin of not complying with the law by refusing to justify the damages claimed by the Ministry of Agriculture. However, Sandu says that the PC President was not able to clarify the legality of having the Ministry he leads constituted as civil damaged party in the ICA privatization case file because there were no legal grounds for it.
View below the open letter:
Minister Daniel Constantin,
You have publicly stated that you are a responsible citizen who respects the laws and the court’s judgments. In the name of the truth I am specifying that none of those involved in the ICA file has ever requested you anything. On The Contrary!
You have been asked to observe the law and justify the damages claimed by the institution you are running. You did not do it!
You have been asked to specify the legality of having Ministry of Agriculture constituted as a civil damaged party in the ICA privatization file. You could not do it because there were no legal grounds for it.
You state that you want the truth to come out, but you have not done nothing to verify the legality and validity of the Ministry ‘s claims, although this control has be requested throughout the trial.
You have not been requested to withdraw from the case, just to check the legality of the documents signed by your predecessors.
Following the exchange of letters over the past two months with the institution you are running it turned out that you cannot answer precisely to correct questions I am specifying below that the legal rules that you have violated are the following:
1. Art. VIII of GEO 147/2002 by which the "Romanian Agriculture Development Fund", whose existence would have justified the civil party status of the Ministry of Agriculture was abolished 10 months before the ICA privatization was completed. As a result, the Ministry of Agriculture would not have been entitled to become a civil party, but the Ministry of Finance.
2. Art. 20 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which provides that "a civil party constitution is made by the nature and extent of claims, of the grounds and evidence on which it is based" which in ICA’s case did not happen. There is no check on file, no explanation, no substantiation of own claims. Moreover, there are documents that say that your institution is not competent to assess damages.
3. Art. 1386 par. 2 of the Civil Code according to which upon the establishment they take into consideration the date the respective damages occurred, in our case, the year 2003, not just any date chosen arbitrarily as it happened in the ICA case where year 2008 was chosen as reference although the privatization took place in 2003 and the completion of court procedure occurred in 2014.
Given all this information I think, Minister, that you will no longer hide behind the delegation of power and a subordinate manager and you will finally take the legal measures which require that:
- ordering a control of the State Domains Agency and of the Ministry of Agriculture by the Court of Auditors in connection with the privatization of ICA,
- Internal investigation within the Ministry of Agriculture to establish who are guilty of breaching the laws above.
Without these measures, you do not have any mitigating circumstances and the investigation of criminal case no. 456 / P / 2014 will be completed by the competent authorities in compliance with the law.
Catalin Sandu.