On Monday, the Vice-President of the Prahova County Council, Dumitru Tudone (PNL), received the powers of the institution’s president after Iulian Dumitrescu was banned from exercising them. Tudone is a politician loyal to Dumitrescu, who moved from Kelerasi County to Prahova County to run on PNL lists, News.ro writes.

The Prahova County Council convened an extraordinary meeting on Monday to determine which of the two vice-presidents of the institution – Dumitru Tudone (PNL) and Christian Apostol (USR) – will take over the duties of the county council president. , after Iulian Dumitrescu was barred from that role by a decree issued by DNA prosecutors, who put him under judicial review for bribery and perjury.

The PNL group proposed that the duties of the president of the Prahova County Council should be taken over by the liberal Dumitru Tudone, who is known to be a close friend and loyalist of Iulian Dumitrescu, while the USR group proposed the USR vice-president Christian. Apostle.

The PSD-PPU councilor group announced that it would not vote for either of the two vice presidents to take over as vice president, with group leader Rares Enescu (PSD) explaining to the two vice presidents: “We are not with either of you disagree, because none of you deserve to rule the destinies of this county in the present conditions.”

He chided the Liberals that Dumitru Tudone did not want “negotiations” with the PSD, explaining that Tudone told him he had no “negotiation mandate”.

District councilor Mihai Apostolake, a representative of the Prahova in Action party, which has a group in the district council, announced that party representatives would vote for a vice president who would agree to some conditions. Among the conditions listed by Mihai Apostolache are “transparency of all activities of the District Council, especially regarding the financial activities” of the institution, conducting an external audit for the mandate 2016-20202 and for the current mandate and conducting a comparison, an analysis of how the funds received from the budget of the County Council, were spent by local administrations. Both vice-presidents stated that they agree with all the conditions put forward by the Prakhova in Action party.

Voting was secret. One councilor who participated in the online meeting complained that he could not be sure of the secrecy of the vote, saying he would challenge his results at the prefecture.

32 deputies voted, 26 votes were recognized as valid, six of them invalid. Dumitru Tudone received 19 votes to take over as president of the Prahova District Council, the minimum number of votes he needed.

Who is Dumitru Tudone?

Dumitru Tudone is a close and devoted friend of Julian Dumitrescu, his old employee. In 2020, Tudone, the former general secretary of the Kalarash County Council, moved from the Kalarash County to Prahova, leaving his family in Kalarash, in 2020 to obtain the mandate of a county councilor in Prahova.

Like Iulian Dumitrescu, Dumitru Tudone is a reserved politician who avoids communication with the press. He repeatedly chaired meetings of the county council, in the context of which Iulian Dumitrescu was not present at the meetings, accused, by the way, of political opponents of “giving instructions” and managing the institution “by phone”, writes the News. .ro

At the time he moved to Prahov to run on PNL lists in that district, DNA tried Dumitra Tudone in the Kalarasi land restitution case, and he was acquitted in that case.

Recently, Forţa Dreptei MP George Ionescu, one of the most important former PNL Prahova leaders, accused Dumitra Tudone of trying to influence the testimony of some witnesses in a criminal case in which the prosecutor’s office is investigating vote-rigging in the commune of Čorani, Prahova’s largest rural town.

“We are publicly demanding the resignation of the Tudone County Council Vice President for using the influence of the position he holds, using the state institution of the County Council to intimidate witnesses in the Chorani vote-stealing case. I invited them to the office in the state institution, telling them to calm down with their statements,” George Ionescu, president of the Prahova branch of the Forţa Dreptei party, one of the national leaders of this political entity, said at a press conference on Friday.

By Monday, Dumitru Tudone had not responded to News.ro’s request to comment on allegations that he tried to influence witnesses in the criminal case in his office at the county council.

READ ALSO: The head of CJ Prahova, Iulian Dumitrescu, accused of receiving more than 3.2 million euros in bribes, challenges the judicial control and seizure of assets / The luxurious life of one of the most influential leaders of the PNL