“My boss harassed me”: Romanian whistleblower pays price for flagging corruption

27 iun., 2023

The Bucharest Tribunal stated recently that a whistleblower from the Ministry of Transport, headed by Sorin Grindeanu from Romania’s leftist Social Democrat Party, was subjected to reprisals after filing complaints about alleged official corruption concerning public contracts. The whistleblower, Mara Paraipan, flagged to Romania’s anti-corruption body, known as DNA, two public contracts — obtained by a controversial company without a transparent public procurement procedure — which she suspected were fraudulent. Instead of investigating her accusations, Paraipan was transferred to another department within the Ministry of Transport, which was signed off by Grindeanu. “From the moment I filed the first complaint to the state secretary … my chief started to harass me,” Paraipan, the whistleblower, told Context.ro.

ESSENTIAL INFORMATION

– A whistleblower from the Ministry of Transport claims that she is being subjected to harassment by their bosses at the Ministry of Transport after flagging a case of suspected fraud

– The case concerns public contracts for a series of roadworks, the costs of which the whistleblower alleges were 10 times higher than initial estimates

– The whistleblower did not want to sign the papers and instead filed a complaint to Romania’s anti-corruption directorate, the DNA

– After the whistleblower was transferred to another department, she then took the transport ministry to court and won his first appeal. His transfer was then suspended

– The judges stated that the transfer was “part of the reprisals” against the whistleblower

– The Ministry of Transport says that Mara Paraipan filed many complaints or petitions which, to some extent, had a negative impact on her department’s activity

In March 2023, Mara Paraipan received an official document signed by Sorin Grindeanu, in which stated that she would be transferred to another department within the Ministry of Transport — the Naval Transport. The argument the ministry posed was that the naval department lacks experts and that the job duties were similar to the post she occupied. Her transfer occurred within eight months after she told the minister that she is being threatened with the transfer.

A month after she filed a complaint to court against the Ministry of Transport, the court suspended the transfer order, saying that the transfer “is part of the reprisals” against her.

“The concrete reasons in order for the transfer to be necessary were not mentioned … nor the concrete reasons why the complainant party was selected from numerous other public servants, but only a general mention regarding her studies,” the Bucharest Tribunal said.

Paraipan launched two cases against the ministry. In the first one, she asked for the immediate suspension of the transfer, and in the second she asked for its dismissal. Paraipan won the first case in which the judges stated the transfer was “part of the reprisals” against her, and she is waiting for the judges to rule in the second case.

Paraipan began working for the Ministry of Transport in 2019. Before that, she worked in the private sector, as deputy-chief engineer for Egis Romania, a consultancy firm that specializes in big infrastructure projects. She graduated from the Technical Faculty of Constructions from Bucharest in 1986, with a specialization in Hydrotechnics.

 Within the Ministry of Transport, Paraipan worked as a senior advisor at the Department of Construction Authorizations, Technical and Environmental Regulation (DRATCM), the department responsible for projects implemented by the state companies responsible for road, naval, and rail infrastructure.

Prices were inflated 10-fold

Paraipan says the problems started shortly after she began her role at the transport ministry. In March 2020, she signed a construction authorization after the Regional Department of Roads and Bridges Craiova, or DRDP (one of eight regional departments responsible for Romania’s roads) asked for in urgent procedure, for a project that was supposed to rehabilitate a part of the DN7 road, a national road that links the capital, Bucharest, to western Romania. The project’s value was initially stated to be 1.3 million RON (261,934 EUR).

In December of the same year, DRDP Craiova came back and asked Paraipan’s department to confirm the total value of the project, the price of which was 10 times higher — approximately 13 million RON (2,619,341 EUR) — than the initial estimate.

Paraipan refused to sign off the document and asked DRDP Craiova to explain why the price had considerably grown.

“My chief pressed me to sign this value off, I didn’t give up and she tried to use my co-workers to persuade me, I told her: ‘no. I can’t do this, because my consciousness doesn’t let me ignore the way we spend public funds so I would need them to justify’,” Paraipan told Context.ro. “I filed a complaint to my boss’ superior, which at the time was the state advisor responsible for my department.”

At the time, the DRDP Craiova chief was Laurentiu Bratu, and the DRATCM chief was Mirela Cebanu-Stefanescu.

Bratu was part of a criminal scandal in 2021 when he was detained by prosecutors who accused him of using a fake diploma to obtain his position within CNAIR, the Romanian body responsible for road infrastructure. Although he was acquitted, he was also forced to pay back the fraudulent-obtained revenues over the last seven years.

At the beginning of 2021, DNA, the anti-corruption body, launched an investigation at DRDP Craiova, and sources cited by the media claimed it was related to the DN7 roadworks contract, the one that Paraipan the whistleblower had flagged as problematic.

Paraipan said her superiors told her that “she lacks duties” and treated her with indifference, and the inflated DN7 road contract was approved by Mirela Cebanu, the Department’s Head. According to the Ministry of Transport representatives, Paraipan should’ve only taken notice of the final value of the contract, instead of asking questions.

The second final value raise, the same company

In 2020, a similar situation occurred with inflated contracts.

DRDP Craiova asked Paraipan’s department for the approval of a different contract for roadworks on DN56 Craiova-Calafat. Although the initial value was 700,000 RON (141,041 EUR), two years later the contract that Paraipan was meant to sign had grown six-fold from its initial value — to 4,2 million RON (846,249 EUR).

DRDP Craiova’s arguments were the same. The representatives of the institution stated that there were arguments related to the technical aspect of the roadworks, that any unpredictable events weren’t taken into consideration, and that the expertise wasn’t available at the time the construction authorization was signed off.

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Roadworks on DN7 (Photo credit: DRDP Craiova)

In a discussion with Context.ro, the representatives from the Ministry of Transport explained that in the case of natural phenomena that affect roads – such as landslides – the roadworks are expedited and executed by using an urgent procedure. This means that the public contract is allocated without public tender and the differences that occur between the initial value of the contracts and the final value could be explained, as there are cases in which further works should be done, which were not initially considered in the estimated price.

In both cases, the contracts were allocated to Alpha Construct Sistem SA, a company that has a long history of obtaining public contracts and is run by the controversial businessman, Constantin Isvoranu.

Representatives from Alpha Construct Sistem stated that the construction authorization was given after a “visual examination” of those sites, made by DRDP Craiova. After that, they could explore the technical expertise available.

“Our society never took part in establishing the initial nor the final value of the roadworks, we only executed the roadworks, which were purchased via award procedure,” Alpha Construct Sistem said Context.ro.

Between 2018-2023, Alpha Construct Sistem obtained public contracts worth a total of 600 million RON (120,892,679 EUR), without taking the direct acquisitions into consideration, many of which are allocated by CNAIR or the Mehedinti County Administration. In 2022, the company reported revenue of 80 million RON (16 million EUR) and a profit of 1,6 million RON (322,380 EUR).

The owner, Isvoranu, is a well-known businessman from Oltenia, whose business partner is Adrian Sitaru.

According to local media, Isvoranu and Alpha Construct Sistem have appeared in some criminal cases, including being subject to investigations by prosecutors at Romania’s anti-organized crime agency DIICOT, in which XX local businessmen were accused of tax evasion, with a prejudice estimated at around 28 million RON (5,641,658 EUR). However, no one was convicted.

“The DIICOT file … started in 2013, against us and other 150 companies from Mehedinți County or other counties, and in the course of 10 years they couldn’t prove the accusations and the prosecutor only delayed it until the limitation period came into effect,” Alpha Construct Sistem said in a statement to Context.ro.

“Although the accusations against Alpha Construct Sistem and Isvoranu were prescribed, we requested continuity of the investigation, because we consider that our society never made anything illegal. In the meantime, the prosecutor retired, and we waited for our file to be assigned to another prosecutor, so that the investigation would continue,” the company added.

Alpha Construct was also involved in a criminal case  involving illegally obtained funds, but the case was ultimately dropped.

In the meantime, Romania’s main fiscal body, ANAF, filed a complaint against several businessmen, including Isvoranu and Alpha Construct, according to a DIICOT document which states that the parties evaded taxes with fictitious records, with a prejudice estimated at 3,6 million RON (725,356 EUR).

“There can’t be any accusation of using fictive records, because every transaction made by Alpha Construct Sistem SA respected the legal framework, so we don’t consider that this case would be solved differently than favorable to our company and Mr. Constantin Isvoranu.

We would also like to mention the fact that in the period of the DIICOT investigation, Alpha Construct Sistem was subject to several inspections by ANAF, but none transformed into an official act stating that we committed any wrongdoing”, the company added in its statement.

As she was confronted with a possible case of financial fraud, the whistleblower Paraipan filed complaints at the control bodies within the transport ministry, as well as at DNA, the anti-corruption body. According to our sources, DNA prosecutors launched an investigation, thus Paraipan became the whistleblower.

  • UPDATE 28.06.2023 The Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal case regarding the two public contracts flagged by Mara Paraipan, according to an official response sent to Context.ro.

The European whistleblower directive sets out a minimum standard of protection for whistleblowers in European Union states. In Romania, an EU member since 2007, the transformation of the Directive into national law was a task related to the second money batch from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.

Initially, it was adopted by Romania’s parliament at the end of 2022, but the law raised a series of questions regarding the protection standard that was awarded to the whistleblowers.

The most controversial articles in that bill were the elimination of anonymity for whistleblowers and the presumption of good faith, which was introduced by the Judicial Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, which at the time was headed by Laura Vicol.

Vicol, who was implicated in a criminal investigation by DNA but was ultimately acquitted, had numerous public critics against the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, but Parliament ignored the critics and adopted the bill.

However, President Klaus Iohannis asked Parliament to revise the law, which was adopted in 2022. Although the final form was improved, it still had some problems. The anonymous reports, for example, were supposed to include not only general information but strong evidence about the violations of law  and set out limitations for whistleblowers who wanted to speak to the press.

This spring, however, the Parliament modified the bill, as was requested by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. The modified bill eliminated the “strong evidence” phrasing, and allowed the whistleblowers to notify “possible breaches of the law”.

“After I first notified the state advisor that I will refuse to recognize the value, the pressure against me started, I wasn’t getting any new projects in a balanced manner, as it states in the Administrative Code, my boss started to harass me, I have numerous examples,” said Paraipan. “I was threatened, called up in meetings by the deputy general secretary, they told me that I will be transferred, that co-workers don’t like me, that I’m not a sociable person, on the contrary, my co-workers filed those complaints as it was requested by my superiors.”

Paraipan also got an annual rating in the ministry’s activity report for 2022, in which representatives from the Ministry of Transport noted that Paraipan is a “conflictual person” who didn’t respect her superiors or their tasks and that she got in numerous arguments with her co-workers as well as making what they said were false accusations.

“Carmen Mara Paraipan filed in 2022 a lot of complaints, clarifying files, petitions or claims to the DARTCM management which, to some extent, affected the Department’s activity, as well as her working relationships and took the attention from the current problems which had to be resolved urgently to the necessity of having to resolve her questions that she filed in 2022,” the activity report states.

Then in March this year, Paraipan received the official file stating that she would be transferred to the Naval Transport Department.

“They changed my duties from a department to another department, where I had to resolve tasks I wasn’t prepared for, because I had no experience in that domain and, as a consequence, to get a low rating in the 2023 activity report,” Paraipan added.

The Romanian law on integrity whistleblowers stipulates that whistleblowers shouldn’t be subject to any reprisals.

The law offers examples of forbidden measures, such as suspending the work contract, dismissals, the modification of the work contract, wage cut or interfering with one’s career development by issuing negative performance evaluation results of the personal activity. Also, harassment, discrimination, causing prejudice against a whistleblower or the request of psychiatric evaluation are also forbidden.

sursa foto deschidere: INQUAM Photos/ Octav Ganea

Despre autor: Matthew Garvey, Attila Biro

Avatar of Matthew Garvey, Attila Biro

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