The whistleblower of the PSD mayor of Mioveni Ion Georgescu is the head of the Pitesti Local Police, Nicoale Valerică, from whom the mayor asked for 30,000 euros, of which he received 10,000 euros, to hire his daughter at the local hospital, they told HotNews.ro. The hospital in Mioveni is the only one built by the state in Romania in the last 30 years and, although it was opened in 2019, it is not working at full capacity even now, one of the reasons being the lack of medical personnel.
Ion Georgescu, the mayor of MioveniPhoto: AGERPRES
According to the cited sources, Nicolae Valerică would have intervened with Ion Georgescu to help him hire his daughter, a doctor, at the hospital in Mioveni, and the mayor would have asked him for 30,000 euros, of which he received 10,000.
Nicolae Valerică is director general of the Pitesti Local Police, according to the institution’s website.
“They have known each other for 30 years and are friends. It was a loan”
Ingrid Alexandrescu, the mayor’s lawyer, argued that the 10,000 euros is actually a loan taken by the mayor from the one who would be his friend for 30 years.
- “Practically, the mayor is accused of having requested the sum of 30,000 euros to favor the employment of the whistleblower as a doctor, something that the mayor obviously denies and I certainly don’t think it happened like that, (.. .) and today he called him to return the sum of 10,000 euros to the whistleblower, which he had taken as a loan last fall.
- The whistleblower knew why he was being called and what happened happened”, declared the mayor’s lawyer, Ingrid Alexandrescu.
She emphasized that the mayor and his whistleblower “have known each other for 30 years and are friends”.
- “The mayor was very open, he gave statements, he said that it is not true, he considers himself innocent and that he did not expect such an incident”, added the lawyer.
“I didn’t take, I gave”
We remind you that the mayor of Mioveni was caught in the act while returning the 10,000 euros he received to his whistleblower.
Asked on Wednesday evening, when he was taken to the DNA Pitesti hearings, why he is accused, mayor Ion Georgescu answered: “I didn’t take, I gave”, without offering any other explanations.
The accusations that DNA brings to the PSD mayor of Mioveni
Ion Georgescu was detained on Wednesday night for the offense of influence peddling.
What prosecutors say:
- “In the fall of 2022, Ion Georgescu would have accepted from a person (witness in question) the promise to remit an amount of 30,000 euros, of which he would have received, in December 2022, a first installment of 10,000 euros, in order to exerted the influence he claimed to have on some decision-making factors in the management of the Mioveni City Hospital, so that they would order the employment of a relative of the witness as a doctor.
- The rest of the money was to be handed over to the mayor, according to the agreement, after the actual placement of the respective person in the medical unit.
- Since until now the mayor would not have been able to keep his “promise” made to the witness, the latter would have asked the suspect to return the amount of 10,000 euros previously remitted to him. In this context, on Wednesday, in the headquarters of the Mioveni town hall, Ion Georgescu gave the witness the sum of money mentioned above, on which occasion the crime was established”.
Ion Georgescu, mayor since 2006 and former PSD member
Ion Georgescu (63 years old) leads the town of Mioveni since 2006, when he won his first term as mayor. Until 2006, he was, for 6 years, deputy mayor of the locality.
Between 1985 and 2000, Ion Georgescu worked at the Automobile Dacia-Renault plant, as “canteen warehouse manager”, according to his CV.
The mayor has the following studies in his CV:
- Master in Financial Business Management, University of Craiova
- Graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, majoring in Management, within the University of Craiova
- Professional trade school IHR, Bucharest
- Pitesti Economic High School
However, he does not mention in what period he did these studies, stating in his CV that they are listed “in chronological order”.
According to his CV, Georgescu has been a PSD member since October 1998. He is vice-president of PSD Argeș and president of PSD’s Mioveni branch.
On Wednesday evening, after the arrest of the mayor in the act, PSD Argeș announced that, by a decision of the County Permanent Bureau, Georgescu was excluded from the party.
The Mioveni hospital, the first built by the state in Romania in the last 30 years
The hospital in Mioveni is the first built from scratch in the last 30 years in Romania. Its reception took place in September 2019, but the unit is not working even now with all sections open. The hospital in Mioveni has 6 floors, 250 beds and numerous departments, including an Emergency Department, Intensive Care and an operating room with 4 rooms.
The construction of the City Hospital in Mioveni began in March 2016, and the financing was fully provided by the PNDL program, the investment being 68 million euros.
The hospital has 23 wards, but only nine are open, and the recruitment contests were canceled during the pandemic, according to a report broadcast by Digi 24 in September.
“The situation is desperate. The mayor said there might be no more money. Of course, medicine is expensive, and especially medicine for infectious diseases and intensive care is very expensive. The expenses we had were with many zeros”, said the manager of the hospital, Horia Trăilă.
