An audio recording during the first term of the trial of Vlad Pascu, the young man who killed two young people in the summer of 2023 in the 2 Mai holiday village, in which the judge from Bihor asked if the victim Sebastian Olariu was present, appeared in the media on Friday , two days after the request of the Judicial Inspection to suspend the magistrate was rejected.
In the recording made on February 22 and published by Antena 3, the dialogue between judge Ancuța Popoviciu and those in the courtroom can be heard for a few seconds.
“Is Olariu Andrei Sebastian present?” asked the magistrate. “It is one of the victims, who died”, is the answer offered by a person in the room.
“Did a victim die? Please don’t talk, I’m just presenting the parties on the list. Please don’t talk over the court,” Popoviciu said, showing through his reply that he didn’t know the basic data of the file.
As Bihor he also wrote, two days ago, on Wednesday, the section for judges in disciplinary matters of the CSM rejected unanimously and without appeal as unfounded the proposal of the Judicial Inspection to suspend Ancuţa Popoviciu from office.
ProTV.ro then noted that the section held that the continued exercise of the function by the magistrate would not affect the impartiality of the disciplinary procedure towards her.
“The aspects presented in the public space concerned criticism of the manner in which the judge conducted the judicial investigation in a criminal case, for which there are other procedural remedies. Also, the aspects regarding the violation of the rules of criminal procedure can also be invoked by formulating the legal ways of appeal and can be relevant for establishing the guilt of the judge in the case of exercising a disciplinary action”, says a press release from the CSM.
Upon leaving the department, Popoviciu remained silent for 70 seconds in front of the journalists who asked him questions.
On April 16, the Judicial Inspectorate asked the CSM to suspend her from office until the completion of the disciplinary procedures against the judge. “The judicial inspectors assessed that the continued exercise of the function by the judge could affect the impartial conduct of the disciplinary procedures and would be likely to seriously damage the prestige of the judiciary”, the representatives of the Judicial Inspection sent.
On the other hand, after the outbreak of the scandal, the judge herself formulated a request for abstention in Vlad Pascu’s file, but it was rejected “as unfounded” by the Mangalia Court.
The Minister of Justice, Alina Gorghiu, declared on Thursday that she would have liked the decision of the Superior Council of Magistracy in the case of judge Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu “to dispel any kind of question mark”, saying that “you cannot pretend that there are no controversies and question marks” related to the way Vlad Pascu’s trial was conducted.
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