Former district mayor Cristian Popescu-Piedone filed an extraordinary appeal with the High Court of Cassation and Justice against the four-year prison sentence he received in the Colectiv case, with his request is to be debated in February 2023, told Agerpres.
Thus, Piedone and other people convicted in the Colectiv case - firefighters George Matei and Antonina Radu, Cristian Nita (the manager of the fireworks company) and Alin George Anastasescu (one of the owners of the club) - filed an appeal in cassation, an extraordinary way of appeal in which the retrial of the case is requested.
The magistrates admitted, in principle, this appeal in cassation, setting 22 February 2023 as the deadline, but they did not agree with the suspension of the execution of the sentence, as requested by Piedone.
On 12 May, Cristian Popescu-Piedone was sentenced by the Bucharest Court of Appeal to 4 years in prison for abuse of office, a sentence reduced by half compared to the sentence of 8 years and 6 months in prison he received at the Bucharest Court.
In addition to the halving of the sentence, Piedone was also removed from the list of defendants who must pay tens of millions of euro in damages to the victims of the fire.
Piedone is accused of signing the agreements and operating authorizations of the Colectiv club in a manner which violated the legal provisions regarding fire safety, including the fact that the provisions regarding the control after issuing the authorizations were not observed.
In the same case, the owners of the Colectiv club were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 6 to 11 years and 8 months, and George Matei and Antonina Radu, the two firefighters from the Inspectorate for Emergency Situation (ISU) Bucharest, who checked the Colectiv club without taking legal measures regarding the observance of the Fire Prevention and Extinction rules, were each sentenced to 8 years and 8 months in prison.
Cristian Nita, the director of the fireworks company, has a suspended sentence of 2 years and 6 months.