Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) prosecutors carried out 33 searches on Wednesday in the counties of Cluj, Bistrita-Nasaud and Mures, including in two prisons, to dismantle a large network of traffickers who were bringing drugs into prisons with the help of a lawyer.
The accusations brought against the members of the network are international drug trafficking, carrying out operations with products with psychoactive effects, money laundering, forming an organised criminal group, misleading judicial authorities, violating the regime of weapons and ammunition and aiding the offender.
At the same time, based on a European Investigation Order, the Italian judicial authorities are carrying out three home searches.
According to a DIICOT press release, between January 2024 and December 2025 several suspects procured, sent, transported, handled, possessed and sold risk drugs, high-risk drugs and psychoactive substances in localities within Cluj County and neighbouring counties.
Members of this group brought drugs into several prisons to be sold to inmates.
The traffickers' activity was supported by a lawyer who repeatedly provided the members of the group with data and information obtained from clients or from the criminal files in which she was involved. She also mediated the traffickers' contact with inmates.
The evidence also showed that between August and December 2025 five perpetrators brought risk and high-risk drugs into the country from Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.
The money obtained from selling the drugs was used to buy movable goods in the names of close associates. For the same purpose the traffickers allegedly introduced illicit funds into the financial circuit of several companies by concluding fictitious works contracts.
The group also acted to secure reduced sentences for individuals investigated or tried for trafficking risk and high-risk drugs and for carrying out operations with psychoactive substances without authorisation. To achieve this the members of the group allegedly misled judicial authorities and committed acts of aiding the offender and violating the weapons and ammunition regime.
'Two suspects, members of the organised criminal group, one of them a suspect who is a lawyer, coordinated two other suspects whose roles included drafting and filing denunciations, recruiting and housing people who were induced to commit offences related to the weapons and ammunition regime, preparing them and providing the weapons. Thus in two situations one of the suspects filed false denunciations regarding the illegal sale of pistols after the members of the group had previously recruited people willing, in exchange for money, to fictitiously assume possession and sale of the firearms,' the prosecutors say.
The hearings are taking place at the DIICOT - Cluj Territorial Service headquarters.
The operation, carried out with the support of Europol, benefits from the assistance of officers of the Directorate for Combating Organised Crime, the organised crime brigades of Targu Mured, Oradea, Alba Iulia and Brasov, fighters of the Bistrita-Nasaud Special Actions Service, gendarmes of the mobile gendarmerie groups of Cluj-Napoca and Brasov, the Bistrita-Nasaud County Gendarmerie Inspectorate and a canine team from the Cluj Regional Customs Directorate.
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