Nephew of ex-president Traian Basescu gets three year prison sentence

Dragos Basescu, the nephew of Romania’s former president Traian Basescu received a jail sentence and will spend three years behind bars for influence peddling.

Dragos Basescu was prosecuted by the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) and was sentenced by the Bucharest Court to two years and six months in jail. The prosecutors appealed the sentence at the Bucharest Court of Appeals, which was subsequently changed to three years.

According to the DNA, on 13 March 2014, Dragos Basescu, with the help of Ciprian Nistor, asked businessman Sandu Staicu, the denouncer in the case, the amount of EUR 500,000 to help him avoid arrest in a contestation Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) and an extra EUR 500,000 for obtaining a favourable solution in the case, as well as to overturn a decision that led to the seizing of the latter’s assets.