Runaway businessman’s leaks force resignation of Romanian Intelligence Service's deputy

Lieutenant-General Florian Coldea, the first deputy director of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), resigned from this position on Tuesday, after a series of allegations against him launched by runaway Romanian businessman Sebastian Ghita. Ghita, who is under investigation in several corruption cases, one of which also involves former Prime Minister Victor Ponta, apparently disappeared just before Christmas and is currently internationally wanted. Since then, Ghita has released a series of eight videos in which he made serious allegations against SRI’s Florian Coldea and Laura Codruta Kovesi, the chief prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). The videos have been broadcasted by Ghita’s TV station, Romania TV. In the most recent video, released on Monday evening, Ghita claims that Florian Coldea and Laura Codruta Kovesi are agents of a foreign intelligence service from one of Romania’s allied states, according to local Mediafax. In previous videos, Ghita spoke about meetings he had with Kovesi and Coldea at SRI safe houses in Bucharest. He also claimed that CIA agents were present at those meetings. Ghita also presented videos and photos of personal meetings and holidays abroad his family and Florian Coldea’s family allegedly spent together in the past. Last week, Ghita showed photos from holidays with Coldea’s family in Seychelles, Tuscany, and at Disneyland Paris. He presented a short video recording of a meeting he allegedly had with Coldea at a holiday villa at Cheia, near Brasov. Shortly after that video, SRI announced that Coldea was suspended and an internal committee would investigate the allegations. In the recording on Monday, Ghita went into more details about the holidays he had with Coldea. He said that his companies had paid for those holidays. However, he claims that in 2014 Coldea asked him for invoices that would prove that the SRI deputy director and not Ghita had paid for those holidays. Coldea needed those documents as he had to answer to another SRI internal committee. Ghita claims that he gave Coldea the invoices he had asked for but that they were fake, according to Mediafax. The Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) announced on Tuesday that it had found no evidence against first deputy director Florian Coldea during its internal investigation. Thus, SRI’s Executive Office took the decision to reinstate Lieutenant-General Florian Coldea in the position of first deputy director. However, Coldea asked SRI director Eduard Hellvig to dismiss him for reasons of “dignity and military honor, and the risk of bringing serious damage to the institution's work.” “In this sense, the SRI director asked the President of Romania to put Lieutenant-General Florian Coldea in reserve. The first deputy director's attributions were taken by SRI director Eduard Hellvig,” reads the statement from SRI. Coldea’s decision to step back is the first official reaction to Sebastian Ghita’s videos, which include other serious allegations related to SRI and DNA. Ghita emphasized in his recordings that he used to be friends with both Kovesi and Coldea. He said that Coldea blackmailed former Prime Minister Victor Ponta into proposing Laura Codruta Kovesi for the position of DNA chief prosecutors, in early 2013. In another recording, Ghita claims that Coldea had threatened Ponta that he would go to jail if he signed the contract for the public private partnership to build the Comarnic-Brasov highway. According to Ghita, Coldea allegedly told Ponta that the Comarnic-Brasov highway shouldn’t be built because Romania’s foreign partners wanted the Sibiu-Pitesti highway constructed. Sebastian Ghita also claims that SRI helped DNA in fabricating cases against powerful Romanian politicians and business people, including some of the biggest media owners in Romania. He claims that he was part of such an operation against former media mogul Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, the former owner of Realitatea TV. According to Ghita, Kovesi allegedly used him to send Vantu to court and then to jail. Kovesi refused to comment on Ghita’s allegations, last week, saying that she would not start a dialogue with an indicted fugitive.