A lengthy Romanian legal drama finally came to an end in January 2025 when Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice fully acquitted Gabriel ‘Puiu’ Popoviciu in a final and irrevocable ruling.
This decision maintained the Bucharest Court of Appeal resolution from July 2024, through which all the defendants were acquitted in the case surrounding the Băneasa shopping, office and residential development.
In her July 2024 ruling, Judge Liana Arsenie, the head of the Court of Appeal, had exonerated Popoviciu, along with the other ten defendants in the case. In the judgment she handed down, she was critical of prosecutor Nicolae Marin (of Romania’s National Anti-Corruption Directorate, known as the DNA) and his conduct in the case. Her ruling, all of which was reconfirmed on 15th of January 2025 in the High Court of Cassation and Justice, was that she was ordering the acquittal of all 11 defendants on the grounds that the alleged offences do not exist.
As Judge Arsenie explained at the time, “The investigating authority assigned fictitious roles and functions and imagined authority relationships. The prosecution was built on a scenario imagined by the prosecutor.”
She highlighted “truncated interpretations, the breaking of logical-legal algorithms and the attribution of criminal connotation to the exercise of civil rights and obligations.” The case had raised concerns internationally regarding the abuse of the legal system to persecute Popoviciu and his fellow defendants.
The legal battle was not limited to Romania. In July 2023, the UK’s Supreme Court discharged Romania’s extradition request for him. That was the UK court’s final decision on the matter and meant that Popoviciu would not be extradited to Romania.
That final UK outcome followed the 11 June 2021 decision by London’s High Court to refuse Popoviciu’s extradition to Romania.
In that ruling, British judge Lord Justice Holroyde stated: “The evidence shows a real risk that the appellant suffered an extreme example of a lack of judicial impartiality, such that there can be no question as to consequences for the fairness of the trial.” Edward Fitzgerald KC said that Popoviciu would suffer a “flagrant denial of justice” if sent back to serve his sentence in Romania.
Willy Fautre, Director of HRWF, commented:
“This final court decision is to be welcomed, building as it does on the Bucharest Court of Appeal’s ruling last July, as well as earlier court decisions in the UK to refuse Romanian requests to extradite Mr Popoviciu. However, for those of us focused on human rights within the European Union, there is concern that such a lengthy injustice even took place in Romania, an EU country. There should be particular concern that several courts have now ruled that Mr Popoviciu suffered persecution at the hands of a prosecutor in what is an EU, and now even Schengen, country.”
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