The former minister was charged with using his influence on former Iasi mayor Gheorghe Nechita to get him to sign a traffic management contract for the city with a company owned by businessman Tiberiu Urdareanu, soliciting and receiving from the latter 5% of the contract value, RON3.4 million.
At the time the offences took place, in 2012, Nita was both a leading social democrat MP and energy minister within the first Ponta Cabinet.
Nita denied the charges and pleaded innocent, saying he had only set up a meeting between the former mayor of Iasi and Urdareanu. He was sentenced to four years in prison by the first court that tried his case. Despite prosecutors’ request for the sentence to be raised to five years in prison on the appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the original sentence.