Mezei: Transport Minister told me to cancel five internal flights and identify MPs on board

"Mr. Minister called me in his office two days before [the vote for the censure motion - e.n.] to tell me that we should cancel some internal flights to stop the access of MPs to the vote for the censure motion. I answered that this would be impossible because we are not slave owners, we're a company of free people. Regardless of what I had told the pilots, they would have never done it. Obviously, I couldn't have asked that from the company's employees. Initially, it was about five flights - two flights from Timisoara, as well as Oradea, Baia Mare, Satu Mare. Mr. Minister asked me to identify the senators and deputies on board, I showed him, after which he told me that he would contact me the next day to tell me his final decision. Of course, that evening I was powerfully affected emotionally, I thought of what I should do, how I should dismantle his plan, how to tell him something like this was not possible because it was the TAROM project that risked being stopped," Mezei stated.

According to the former head of TAROM, in a new discussion on the following day, the minister told her to find a technical issue to stop one of the flights.

In regards to the ex officio notification of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) on the matter, Madalina Mezei said that the prosecutors did not request any sort of evidence, just invited her as a witness in a case opened for the Minister of Transport, "which regards abuse of office".

Outgoing Prime Minister Viorica Dancila sent on Friday the Prime Minister's Control Corps to the Minister of Transport and the National Company for Romanian Air Transport TAROM SA, "for the purpose of clarifying management aspects signalled by the mass-media".

In his turn, the outgoing Minister of Transport, Razvan Cuc, wrote, Thursday evening, on Facebook, that Madalina Mezei should've restructured TAROM, not try to play games in favor of some groups of the company.