False pensions case: SRI denies Ștefan Corneliu's general rank, arrested over 860 forged files
Ștefan Corneliu, former candidate for Mayor of Sector 3, claimed he was a general at the SRI. The service has told DIICOT that he was employed only as a non-commissioned officer between 2004 and 2011.
SRI contradicts Ștefan Corneliu's claims: non-commissioned officer, not general
The Romanian Information Service has informed prosecutors at DIICOT that Ștefan Corneliu, the former candidate for Mayor of Sector 3 held in preventive detention in the false pensions case, was employed by the institution between 2004 and 2011 with the rank of non-commissioned officer — not as a general, as he had claimed publicly. The information was obtained exclusively by Gândul.
Corneliu had presented himself as a former general in the information services, and on the day the Bucharest Court of Appeal issued a preventive arrest warrant against him for 30 days, he declared: "I retired from the SRI in 2023, after 28 years, and the addresses found during the search of my home are real. I retired as a general. What do you think? They will see it too."
During the home search conducted at his residence, investigators are said to have found several documents used to establish length of service, in which periods of activity at the SRI were listed. DIICOT requested the secret service to provide exact employment dates for the defendant and his seniority in the "tactical field."
Hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents analysed
The DIICOT investigation in the "inflated" pensions case has advanced considerably: prosecutors have conducted hundreds of interviews and analysed thousands of documents from the National Pension Houses with the aim of identifying additional forgery cases beyond those initially estimated. The network under investigation is accused of submitting false statements to the Pension Houses to create fictitious work seniority in exchange for substantial sums of money.
Prosecutors have twice requested the extension of preventive detention for the two main defendants, Ionuț Bumbu and Ștefan Corneliu. On 14 October, the Bucharest Court rejected the latest extension request, deciding to place them under house arrest. DIICOT contested this decision, and the case is to go to the Bucharest Court of Appeal following the reasoned judgment.
Denunciation to the DNA and allegations of a refused deal
According to case documents cited by Gândul, Ștefan Corneliu made a statement in which he indicated that in June 2023 he filed a denunciation with the DNA regarding the fabrication of work seniority to obtain pensions. "Following the denunciation, he was interviewed by a DGA officer, giving a statement of approximately 15 pages. He specifies that he filed the denunciation to benefit from sentence reduction, since he was a defendant in another case with the same subject, handled by the Prosecutor's Office attached to the Court of Sector 2", the investigation documents state.
The former candidate also claimed that officers from the Organised Crime Combat Brigade (BCCO) had proposed to him, on two occasions, to conclude a guilty plea agreement. The first offer would have provided for a two-year sentence with suspension, which he refused. "Two months later, another officer, also from the BCCO, proposed to me the conclusion of a guilty plea agreement, but this time with a final resulting sentence of three years with execution", Corneliu declared to Gândul.
He added that the material that formed the basis of the DNA denunciation resulted from his own journalistic investigation, specifying that he is also accredited by the presidency of the Turkish state for journalistic activity on its territory.
PRM candidacy in 2020 and electoral promises
Ștefan Corneliu had been a candidate for the PRM in the 2020 local elections for the position of Mayor of Sector 3, promising to improve the quality of life for persons classified as disabled by increasing the monthly budget for personal maintenance.
At the time Gândul approached him, Corneliu was with his lawyer, awaiting the trial of the appeals. Previously, the Bucharest Court had ordered the investigation of all six detained members of the network in freedom, under judicial supervision. The Bucharest Court of Appeal subsequently decided definitively on the preventive arrest of Corneliu along with two other defendants in the same case.
According to DIICOT investigators, the case concerns more than 860 false pension files — a number that exceeds prosecutors' initial estimates, as the analysis of documents from the National Pension Houses continues.
Source: Gândul