Judge Corina Ciobanu of the Court of Appeal in Bucharest decided on Tuesday to send a request to the Bulgarian authorities to find out whether Elena Udrea can still be tried in the cases pending in Romanian courts as a result of her extradition from Bulgaria. Udrea is in prison after being sentenced to 6 years in prison in the case of Hala Bute.

On Tuesday, judge Corina Chobanu was supposed to hear Olena Udrea in the “Hidroelectrica” ​​case, in which Udrea is accused of influence peddling and money laundering in connection with the sum of $5 million received from businessman Bohdan Buzyanu, writes Agerpres. Udrea is in the Tirgshore Penitentiary Colony, and the hearing at the Bucharest Court of Appeal was to be held via video conference.

At the beginning of the trial, Elena Udrea’s lawyers asked to stop the criminal proceedings on the grounds that the facts of which Udrea is accused in this case have lost their validity, referring to the decision of the Constitutional Court of May 2022.

The magistrate of the Bucharest Court of Appeal insisted on turning to Bulgaria for clarification

The judge in charge of the case, Corina Ciobanu, raised the procedural issue ex officio, invoking the “speciality rule” of Law 302/2004, which provides that the country that extradits a person to Romania can impose certain limitations on the trial and prosecution responsibility of the extradited person.

Pursuant to Law 302/2004, an extradited person shall neither be prosecuted, tried, detained for the execution of a sentence, nor subject to any other restriction of his personal freedom for any fact that preceded the extradition, except for what motivated the extradition.

Essentially, the judge wants to know if the judicial authorities in Bulgaria have decided that Elena Udrea should be extradited to Romania only for the Gala Bute case, on the condition that she can no longer be tried in other cases pending before the courts .

When asked by Judge Corina Choban whether the “rule of specialty” was adopted or agreed to in the Bulgarian courts, Elena Udrea replied that she did not know what it was about, as she was not a lawyer.

Although the lawyer of Olena Udrea noted that this was not discussed in the Bulgarian courts, the judge insisted on sending an appeal to the neighboring country to get clarification on the conditions of extradition, writes Agerpres.

Currently, Elena Udrea has two cases pending in the Romanian courts:

• “Hydroelectricity” file., at the Court of Appeal in Bucharest, where she was sent to trial on charges of abuse of influence and money laundering, together with journalist Dan Andronic, accused of perjury. According to DNA, Elena Udrea accepted a promise made through intermediaries by businessman Bohdan Buzeyanu in 2011 to receive the sum of 5 million dollars to influence decision-makers in the Ministry of Economy and Hydropower to maintain the already negotiated terms of contracts that the businessman’s company entered into an agreement with the power generation company.
• The case regarding the financing of Traian Basescu’s election campaign since 2009.
• In the first instance, Udrea was sentenced to eight years in prison for inciting bribery and money laundering. The case is being considered at the appeal stage in the Supreme Court.

After the final verdict in the case of Hala Bute, Udrea tried to flee the country and was caught in Bulgaria, where she was detained for more than two months, during which the extradition process continued. On June 16, she was taken to Romania and placed in a prison in Tirgsor to serve a 6-year sentence.