The former director of IT giant Microsoft in Romania, Silviu Hotaran, is prosecuted in a file separated from the one regarding the acquisition of software licenses by the state through intermediaries in a transaction from which a group of Romanian businessmen got kickbacks.
Hotaran is being investigated in the file called “Microsoft 2”, according to News.ro, which quoted judicial sources.
“All my life I lived and promoted values related to ethics and morality. I have never given or taken bribes, I don’t have accounts,” said the former executive of Microsoft Romania, after leaving the HQ of the National Anticorruption Directorate on Monday.
The former head of the Fujitsu in Romania, Claudiu Florica, was also summoned at the DNA, according to the same sources.
Microsoft 2 is separated from the file in which the judges handed down the first jail sentences. The former mayor Piatra Neamt, Gheorghe Stefan, was sentenced to six years in jail, the former minister of Communications, Gabriel Sandu, got three years in jail. In the same time, the controversial businessmen Dorin Cocos and Nicolae Dumitru got two years and four months in jail, each.
According to prosecutors, Cocos got a bribe of EUR 9 million from businessmen Claudiu Florica and Dinu Pescariu so that his wife at that time, Elena Udrea, who was minister of Development, would help seal the deal regarding the software licenses between Florica’s firms and the Ministry of Communication.
Several former government officials are being investigated in the “Microsoft 2” file.
The initial framework contract for the leasing of Microsoft licenses was inked in April 2004 in an overvalued deal worth EUR 54 million. However, EUR 20 million out of the total sum was distributed to public officials and people involved in the deal.
Former minister Sandu said that the black money from the Microsoft affair was also used to finance political campaigns in Romania.
This file was dubbed by the media as one of the biggest corruption investigations in Romania.
Ovidiu Posirca
Photo source: adevarul.ro.
The post Ex-Microsoft Romania head Silviu Hotaran, under prosecution by anti-graft agency DNA appeared first on Business Review.