Former Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu placed on police’s wanted person list. An arrest warrant was issued in his name after being sentenced to 10 years and 8 months in prison for bribery and is currently at large. Source say he left the country last month

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The Bucharest Court of Appeal has handed down its final decision in the case of former Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu who was accused of corruption, after six and a half years of trial. The judges sentenced the former mayor to 10 years and 8 months in prison.

Prosecutors from the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) brought criminal charges against the former mayor in November 2015. Prosecutors alleged at the time, that, between 2013 and 2015, the then-mayor of the capital, Sorin Oprescu, set up an organized criminal group with the aim of collecting commissions from contracts awarded by institutions under the mayor’s office.

The mayor would have received 10% of each invoice paid by the municipality.

„On September 5, 2015, the defendant Oprescu Sorin Mircea, in his capacity as Mayor of Bucharest, based on a prior agreement with the defendants Popa Bogdan Cornel and Stanca Cristian, received from the former the sum of 25,000 euros out of a total of 60. 000 euros unduly demanded by the two from the administrators of a company (complainants in the case), in connection with a contract for the execution of works at the Cultural Centre of the Brâncovenești Palaces at the Gates of Bucharest,” DNA prosecutors said.

In May 2019, Sorin Oprescu was initially sentenced to 5 years and 4 months in prison in the Bucharest Court of Appeal in the same case, but he appealed the sentence. 

Today’s verdict more than doubles the initial prison term at 10 years and 8 months imprisonment. 

In addition, the court also ordered the extended confiscation of the sums of 102,000 lei and 9,400 euros, as well as several houses and land owned by former mayor general Sorin Oprescu in Bucharest (Herăstrău street) and Ciolpani (Ilfov).

Oprescu was not found by the police after the Bucharest Court of Appeal decision on Friday.

According to G4Media sources, Oprescu had left Romania on April 25 via the Giurgiu border crossing. He had no interdiction to leave the country.