The name of Vasile Blaga appears in the EADS case file, according to information presented exclusively by Romania TV.
UPDATE- Vasile Blaga denies the bribery allegations. "I do not know Claudiu Florică"
The PDL leader is accused of taking bribes amounting to 80,000 euros in the biggest corruption case in Romania, and the money was used to finance Traian Băsescu’s election campaign of 2004. The disclosure was made before the prosecutors by a witness in this file.
Claudiu Florică denounced Vasile Blaga, Minister of the Interior at the time the contract was signed for the borders security that he took a bribe of 80,000 euros. The same witness said that Vasile Blaga agreed on the bribe directly with Siveco Romania. Moreover, in the spring of 2005, Claudiu Florică had allegedly told his relatives that he was deceived by Vasile Blaga, the new interior minister, who had promised him his support before the 2004 election in exchange for a sponsorship of the campaign.
Claudiu Florică claimed to have been excluded by Vasile Blaga from the informal circuits of giving and taking bribes, but that he (Vasile Blaga- editor’s note) agreed on the bribes directly with Siveco Romania through Irina Socol and Gabriel Sadoveanu and the EADS through Alexandru Georgescu without including also Claudiu Florică in these negotiations. (...) Therefore, the value was reduced to 524 million, but they kept the mechanism allowing the existence of a much larger contract value (...) in other words the exaggerated EADS profit from which the bribes to the people involved from the Ministry of the Interior, respectively Vasile Blaga be paid.
Romanian border security contract was awarded without tender to EADS, by government decision in August 2004 to a value of almost one billion euros.