Former mayor Ketalin Cereces, who fled Romania before serving his prison term and was caught in Germany, where he is trying to stave off extradition, could lose some of his fortune. DNA prosecutors won a trial at the Court of Appeal in Cluj in which they demanded the former mayor pay back sums received as bribes in a corruption case other than the one in which he was convicted in November.

DNA prosecutors won a trial at the Court of Appeal of Cluj in which they demanded a retrial in the Maramures court regarding the confiscation of the sum received as a bribe from Katalin Čerečes in an old corruption case, writes Digi 24. In this case, Čerečes was tried for bribery in 2013.

The facts were established, he was acquitted at first instance, and DNA found that the judges of the Maramures court did not order the special confiscation of the $150,000, and filed an appeal on the matter.

The appeal was accepted and the case was remanded to the Maramures Court for the magistrates to decide on confiscation of the money. In 2013, a bribe was allegedly given to the town hall of Baia Mare to allow the transit of heavy-duty vehicles within the municipality, the money was received from a company owned by a Swiss.

Cătălin Chereches is currently in prison in Germany, awaiting extradition proceedings. He refused to consent to a simplified extradition, and his lawyers are trying to prevent the ex-mayor from being brought to the country with extraordinary measures.

• EXCLUSIVE How Cătălin Cherecheș was found. The first explanations of the Munich prosecutor’s office regarding the capture of the fugitive mayor: Physical force was used

How Chereces managed to escape from Romania, although he was registered at the border, being under judicial control

On November 24, the mayor of the Baia Mare municipality, Katalin Chereches, was finally sentenced to 5 years in prison with execution for bribery. The court also decided to increase the period during which he can no longer hold public office from 4 to 5 years. The magistrates also confirmed the seizure of the mayor’s property.

According to the court’s decision, several months spent in prison in 2016 will be deducted from Cherechesh’s 5-year sentence.

There was a judge on the panel, whom Cherechesh’s in-laws tried to bribe her with 50,000 euros for a lighter sentence, according to DNA.

• Baia Mare mayor’s mother-in-law was caught red-handed when she gave her mother 50,000 euros to the judge for a lighter sentence for the mayor / Cătălin Cherecheș: I do not rule out a maneuver, even on the part of the mother-in-law
• “Stories of a housewife.” Mayor Ketalin Čerečes criticizes her mother-in-law, who was caught bribing the judge’s mother: “You get the impression that justice is like a market”

Cherechesh was under judicial control and had a travel ban, so he was registered at all borders of the country. However, he managed to escape from the country.

On the night of November 23-24 (Thursday-Friday), Cătălin Cherecheş broadcast live on Facebook, claiming that he is innocent and that 10 years of his life were stolen. “I suffered public humiliation accompanied by false accusations, but I did not give up the fight and defended my honor and the honor of my family,” Cherechesh said.

• VIDEO Cătălin Cherecheș’s last concert, with sobs and sighs, before he was sent to prison. “This process did not go according to my wishes or interests”

According to the border police, Cherechesh left the country on November 24 at 7:49 a.m. with a relative’s certificate. According to local media, it is about the fugitive mayor’s cousin. The police reported that this is a person born in 1988 who lives in a European country.

• The first explanations for the escape of Cătălin Cherecheș: the mayor left the country with the act of a relative before knowing the verdict

According to police officials, Romanian and Hungarian border guards, who were outside the checkpoints, matched the image on the identity document with the image of the passenger and allowed the vehicle carrying Chereces to enter Hungary.

“Chereches left the country through the border with Hungary through PTF Petea at 07:49 under another identity belonging to a relative, a husband. At that time, a vehicle registered in Romania was presented at the border control, which was carried out on the territory of Hungary, in which there were two people, the driver, who was registered as a taxi, and the passenger on the right seat.

Two people identified themselves with Romanian identity cards, one of which, the passenger’s, belonged to a relative of Cereces Catalin, a person living in a European state,” said IGPF Inspector General Victor-Stefan Ivascu.

How Cherechesh managed to get from Hungary to Germany

The waiter helped him rent a car for 1,400 euros, which he used to get to Ulm, Germany.

After he arrived at his aunt’s house in Germany, he hid for a day while Romanian, Hungarian and German police managed to piece together information provided by taxi drivers, a waiter and after receiving surveillance images. closer to taking over the liberal mayor.

Cherechesh learned that he was being persecuted and that there was a European warrant in his name. His aunt called a taxi on November 27, saying she wanted to go in a certain direction, but the call later turned out to be a mistake, hoping to mislead the police.

But the testimony of the taxi driver who drove him from Hungary to Germany helped the investigation significantly.

“Also, there were two operational moments when they were very close to capture, but at one point the citizen gave false information. This event, which the Romanian police asked the Hungarians to interrogate the taxi driver who returned from Germany and find out exactly where he was left, was very inspiring,” Predou told Digi 24.

The interior minister said that the location of Chereces in Hungary was made after “the exit from the border was determined”.

Judicial sources told HotNews.ro that the mayor of Baia Mare tried to escape from Germany on the evening of November 28. He was driving a car with his aunt at a speed of about 200 kilometers per hour. According to the cited sources, it was a Mercedes Benz C Klasse AMG with the registration number Neu Ulm.

Arriving at the railway station in Augsburg, Cherechesh remained hidden in his aunt’s car, while the woman tried to negotiate with the taxi driver to transport him to Austria, but without success.

At that moment, the Bavarian policemen surrounded the car and demanded that he get out of the car and show his ID. Cherechesh did not obey and tried to escape.

The SEK mobile special forces (Spezialeinsatzkommando) acted together with the Bavarian police to apprehend Chereches, who resisted and escaped with facial injuries.

An hour after he was taken to the station for standard procedures, the Romanian police were notified of the arrest of the fugitive mayor.

At the time of his arrest, Katalin Čerečes had the following money with him: 3,265 euros, approx. 150 euros in forints and approximately 320 euros in lei.

The key witness that led to the capture of Ketalin Cherechesh

The mayor of Baia Mare could have been apprehended sooner, but investigators were misled by false information, Interior Minister Catalin Predoju said last week.

Romanian police worked with German and Hungarian police to catch Cereces after Baia Mare’s mayor managed to leave the country via Vama Petea on his cousin’s ticket, but “we shouldn’t have been in a situation where we’re chasing him across Europe “. “, Cătălin Predoiu said in an interview with Digi24.

The Minister of Internal Affairs emphasized that the Romanian police checked thousands of images from the checkpoints, established the identity of the taxi driver who transported Chereces, then contacted the Hungarian police and found out the place where the convicted mayor bought a card phone in the city of Budapest.

Predoiu said Romanian police had gone after Chereces “with limitations”, arriving in the Hungarian capital two to three hours late, but the time window had shortened.

According to the reconstruction made by the investigators, Chereches was seen on surveillance cameras in the area of ​​the Budapest Opera House, G4Media notes. He bought GSM cards from there on Friday lunchtime, but was unable to activate them.