International adoption files, gone! The role of the daughter of a former SIE general

On February 20, 1997, the management of the Bucharest Court, led by judge Viorel Roș, notified the Police about the disappearance from the court archive of 248 civil files with international adoptions as their object.

The then Minister of Justice ordered an extensive check at the Bucharest Court and the judicial inspectors of the higher court, the Bucharest Court of Appeal, found that 404 civil adoption files had disappeared: 173 from the period 1990-1993 and 231 files from the period 1994-1995 .

Along with the files, several minutes of meetings from the years 1994-1995, meeting folders and record books disappeared, reports Radio Europa Liberă.

"I asked for a check to be made and a report on the situation created. The report was made and after that I think a criminal complaint was also made. Unfortunately, as far as I can remember, the criminal investigation did not lead to any results, that is, it did not discover the perpetrators", said Valeriu Stoica, former Minister of Justice.

He says he no longer has the report drawn up at his request, but that it should be in the ministry's archive. The Ministry of Justice claims that in 1997 there was a structure that checked the activity of judges, but it did not find the report ordered by Valeriu Stoica.

"During the period referred to in your request, i.e. the year 1997, the competence of the control activity was divided and assigned, according to the matter, to several departments within the Ministry of Justice, the Inspection Corps having the powers of verification and control of the activity, training and professional skills of judges .(…)

At the level of the Control Body, no inventories with control reports of the activity of judges/courts since 1997 were identified", the ministry's response, quoted by romania.europalibera.org , states

The control lasted two months, between April and May 1997. The magistrates involved escaped disciplinary sanctions because, according to the law at the time, sanctions could be applied within 1 year from the date of committing the acts.

One of the conclusions of this control is that "another cause that led to the perpetuation of the phenomenon over time was the distribution of files by sections, respectively their judgment mainly by the Third Civil Section, especially by a certain panel: Daniela Brăgău and Claudia Gherbovan Silinescu". The latter is the daughter of the former SIE general, Constantin Silinescu.

If on the administrative side things were clear and those involved could no longer be sanctioned, on the criminal side the investigations stagnated until the facts were prescribed.

Thus, all these judges accused of forgery in documents were removed from criminal prosecution by the General Prosecutor's Office.