The Reasons Why Traian Berbeceanu’s Investigators Were Acquitted By The Judges. “The manner in which they exercised their duties was extremely deficient”

“The section for prosecutors of the Superior Council of the Magistracy decided to restore the prosecutor to his previous position, by recognizing his seniority in work and in the magistracy for the period 07.17.2014 – present. Also, the Section for Prosecutors of the Superior Council of the Magistracy decided to forward the measures ordered to the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice in order to establish and grant the due monetary rights”, it is also specified in the CSM decision, which was taken unanimously . Ioan Mureșan will retroactively collect all the salaries he did not benefit from, the total amount being almost one million euros, if penalties are also calculated.

Originally sentenced to 7 years in prison

At the trial court, Ioan Muresan was sentenced to 7 years in prison. The other two defendants were also acquitted, initially with execution, namely the police officer Alin Muntean, as well as another former prosecutor from DIICOT Alba Iulia, Nicolaie Cean, currently retired, the legal basis being that “the act is not foreseen by the criminal law”. The acquittal decision was pronounced by the “majority” made up of judges Rodica Cosma (president of the panel), Constantin Epure and Andrei Claudiu Rus. Lavinia Valeria Lefterache and Simona Elena Cîrnaru formulated a separate opinion, in the sense of maintaining the decision of criminal incrimination of the facts. The magistrates unanimously upheld the acquittal of Traian Berbeceanu issued by the trial court.

In essence, three of the members of the trial panel assessed that “there are no elements in relation to which it can be assessed in the sense that the defendants tried to invent evidence or build an unreal accusation against Berbeceanu”. In other words, the two prosecutors and the policeman were superficial in the investigation, misinterpreted a number of evidence and used unreal evidence in the investigation, but these things are not criminal acts, even if they ultimately led to the apprehension and the preventive arrest of the policeman and his arraignment.

Investigation “extremely deficient and more than critical”

According to the “majority” magistrates, all the information in Ioan Mureșan’s possession led him to believe that Berbeceanu would have committed the acts of which he was suspected, and the deficiencies found in terms of gathering evidence do not have the significance of “inventing” them, nor of some ” false accusations”. “Regarding the accusation of unfair repression, the High Court – the Panel of 5 judges considers that the defendant Mureșan Ioan limited himself to the exposure of objective elements resulting from the interceptions of the telephone conversations of the investigated persons, without distorting or mystifying the ascertained aspects, and the circumstance that erroneously it was held that from these evidences it follows that Berbeceanu Traian would have committed the crime of perjury is not equivalent to the formulation of an accusation against a person who was known to be innocent, but to a wrong assessment of the significance of some factual circumstances, accompanied by an error in legal reasoning regarding the meaning of a person heard as a witness and who benefits from the privilege against self-incrimination,” the magistrates wrote.

“Handling” resulting from professional obligations

The panel from the ÎCCJ also noted that the “handiwork” of the policeman Alin Muntean was not aimed at fabricating evidence against Traian Berbeceanu, but reflected the manner in which he related to his professional obligations. “The High Court – The panel of 5 judges did not identify in the case elements that would lead to the conclusion that the defendants invented evidence to build an unreal accusation against Berbeceanu Traian, even if the way in which they exercised their powers was extremely deficient and more than critical. From the administered evidence, it emerged that the actions aimed at determining some witnesses to give statements against Berbeceanu Traian, the erroneous interpretation of some factual circumstances through minutes called “investigations” or other such actions, were undertaken by the defendants Cean Nicolaie Ioan and Muntean Alin Mirel, apparently without the defendant Mureșan Ioan knowing them”, the decision also states.

The three judges impute to prosecutor Mureșan “a superficiality regarding the verification of the aspects that were made available to him by the defendant Muntean Alin Mirel”, as well as “a lack of initiative in investigating aspects related to possible acts of corruption committed by the defendant Cean Nicolaie Ioan”. All this does not constitute, in their opinion, “elements in relation to which it can be concluded that Mureșan Ioan would have known that Berbeceanu Traian was innocent”.

Copy-paste evidence and “professional negligence”

The judges recognize the fact that the prosecutor relied on general, imprecise statements of the witnesses or on unreal mentions of minutes drawn up by the defendant Muntean Alin Mirel. Prosecutor Mureșan is criticized for “copy-pasting some aspects related to probation, contained in previously prepared reports, in relation to which the defendant Mureșan Ioan can be charged with professional negligence, both from the perspective of the lack of verification of the documents drawn up by the delegated police officers in question, as well as the method of drawing up the proposal for preventive arrest”.

Also, the way in which the video recordings of a search were interpreted represents, in the opinion of the judges, “personal assessments” of Ioan Mureșan and “reflects the way in which he perceived the significance of the aspects captured in the recording, the situation being similar also regarding telephone listings and the way in which the existence or not of telephone traffic between the respective stations was interpreted”. Regarding another unreal evidence administered for the arrest of the former head of BCCO Alba Iulia, it is claimed that “it does not reflect, objectively, an intention of the defendant Mureșan Ioan to build an accusation against Berbeceanu Traian, but a distorted representation of the perceived reality of the defendant”.

Separate opinion of the “minority” judges

The two judges who formulated a separate opinion considered that “the means resorted to by the defendants cannot be considered simple manifestations of negligent or unethical conduct in the activity of administering or assessing evidence”. According to them, “the actions of the defendant Mureșan Ioan, supported by the co-defendants Muntean Alin and Cean Nicolaie, were not limited to the occasional obtaining of statements through unfair methods or to the erroneous interpretation of some unique means of evidence in the economy of the case”, but “s -consolidated in repeated and combined acts of altering testimonial evidence or documents and distorting the content of procedural documents, the entire conduct being subsumed to the indictment, by any means, of a single person, namely the civil party Berbeceanu Traian”.

“(…) In this case, it is not a matter of a simple erroneous interpretation of some factual data provided by the evidence, but of the substantial distortion of its content, in order to artificially strengthen the accusations brought against the civil party Berbeceanu Traian and his indictment. In disagreement with the majority opinion, we consider that the hypothesis of finding, at the origin of the actions of the defendants Mureșan Ioan and Muntean Alin, the belief that the former police officer was guilty of the acts for which he was charged, is unequivocally refuted by the evidence administered in both phases of judgments, exhaustive and thorough evidence analyzed by the first instance and fully confirmed on appeal”, the separate opinion signed by Lavinia Valeria Lefterache and Simona Elena Cîrnaru also states.

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