Pavel Popescu, vice-president of Romania's National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) and a former National Liberal Party member, has accused dismissed prime minister Ilie Bolojan of lying in the row over 200,000 euros for an official mission. Popescu says the money was for Romania's candidacy to a body under the United Nations.
Bolojan said ANCOM had asked, through a government ordinance, for 200,000 euros from the state budget to promote a person in the authority's leadership for a seat on the Council of the International Telecommunication Union, which sits under the United Nations. Popescu wrote on Facebook that Bolojan had described an alleged scheme of about 200,000 euros to be spent on protocol in Arab countries, including Qatar, so that someone from ANCOM's leadership could seek that post.
Popescu rejects that account. He says Romania, as a European Union member from the former Soviet bloc, and not he himself or any other person in ANCOM's leadership, is running for a ninth consecutive term on the ITU Council at the Union's Plenipotentiary Conference, PP-26.
He also disputes the date and the amount. According to Popescu, the government decision initiated by ANCOM had been in public consultation since 29 September. Bolojan said he learned of the emergency ordinance only on 19 October, at the last cabinet meeting. Popescu says the sum initially allocated for Romania's ITU Council candidacy was 160,000 euros, not 200,000. He published the annex cited by Bolojan, which sets out 860,000 lei, about 160,000 euros, as the proposed lobbying expenses for Romania in Qatar to obtain another term on the council.
Popescu says that in the last cabinet meeting he chaired, Bolojan presented a false picture and withdrew the draft government decision from the agenda at the last moment, knowingly undermining a year of diplomatic work for Romania's ITU candidacy.
He further reproaches Bolojan for approving, by another government decision at the same meeting, 340,000 euros to fit out Romania's pavilion and for cultural activities at the Francophonie Village on the margins of a summit in Cambodia. At that summit, Dacian Cioloș is to present his candidacy for secretary-general of the International Organisation of La Francophonie. Popescu described the contrast as blatant hypocrisy.
On DIGI 24, Bolojan said a draft decision setting ANCOM's protocol expenses appeared on the agenda of the last cabinet meeting without anyone informing him. He said ANCOM was preparing to spend almost 200,000 euros on protocol in Arab countries so that someone from its leadership would be elected to lead an international organisation. He said he removed the item from the agenda and hoped a new, more understanding government would not approve the spending, after Facebook posts by the ANCOM vice-president who was upset that the expense had been blocked.