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The mayor of Mioveni, Ion Georgescu, was detained by prosecutors of the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA)'s Pitesti Territorial Service after several hours of hearings, his lawyer, Ingrid Alexandrescu, said Thursday morning.
"The normal procedure of acknowledging the charges and drawing up procedural documents for taking the measure of detention for 24 hours as a suspect has simply been carried out. (...) Basically, the mayor is accused of requesting the sum of 30,000 euros to favour the employment of the whistleblower as a physician, which, obviously, the mayor denies and I certainly do not think that happened, (...) and today he called him to return the amount of 10,000 euros to the whistleblower, which he had taken as a loan last autumn. The whistleblower knew why he was called and it has happened what it happened," said the lawyer, agerpres reports.
She said the mayor and whistleblower have known each other for 30 years and are friends.
"The mayor was very open, he gave statements, he said it was not true, he considered himself innocent and that he did not expect such an event," the lawyer said.
The mayor of Mioveni, social-democrat Ion Georgescu, is being investigated in a case of influence peddling, judicial sources told AGERPRES. According to them, the mayor would have been caught red-handed, following a denunciation, while returning to a person, a physician, the amount of 10,000 euros, money previously received from him as an early payment out of a total amount of 30,000 euros that would have been claimed to facilitate the physician's hiring at the Mioveni hospital.
The PSD Arges leadership voted on Wednesday evening to exclude from the party the mayor of Mioveni, Ion Georgescu, investigated by DNA for corruption. Ion Georgescu held the position of first vice-president of PSD Arges and president of PSD Mioveni.
