Dragnea was charged for influencing a director of the Social Assistance Direction in Teleorman county to hire two members of the county’s Social Democrat Party (PSD) branch. The two maintained employment benefits between 2006 and 2012, including salaries totaling RON108,612, without actually working for the agency.
Judges of the High Court of Cassation and Justice have canceled Dragnea’s previous suspended sentence of two years in prison for electoral fraud, with the respective sentence being merged into the one handed today. The PSD leader has also been acquitted on the charge of forgery. The social democrat leader will also need to pay RON186.000 worth in damages.
Anticorruption prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence of seven years and six months for the ruling party leader.
Several others have been sentenced in the case, most of them being handed suspended prison sentences. The exceptions were Floarea Alesu – the director of the agency who employed the PSD Teleorman members, who was sentenced to three years and seven months in prison, after merging a previous sentence – and Dragnea’s ex-wife Bombonica Prodana, whose prosecution was ended after agreeing to pay damages in the case.
All the decisions in the case are not final and can be appealed.