A guide to the „torture” carried out by the Binom,this is what we might call the book, written by a former judge, Ion Popa. A man who knew the System, who had the courage to write how he saw things. Which turned him into a target.

I have been writing a lot about destroyed destinies, about the illogical and abusive way in which Romanian society is divided, in a forced and accelerated way. I have heard many say that we are witnessing a social experiment on the scale of a nation, under the pretext of fighting corruption. Others are just talking about a political struggle in which the preservation of power is done with the help of handcuffs.

Both hypotheses cover a reality that many have felt it themselves, so now I'm addressing those who want to understand what has happened in recent years. And this is possible also thanks to the efforts of a man who wrote a book.

A book that a friend recommended to me and that turns out to be a surgical analysis of what can be defined as the Foundations of the Parallel State.

It is called „Romanian Justice Night 2005-2020” and is written by a former judge, Ion Popa.

I will extract more things from there, but for now I want to start with a small guide to understanding the actions of the Binom Project, as Ion Popa calls the vast operation of mutilation of Romanian society.

Here are the steps identified by the author in the Binom’s "Torture" Guide in the Age of Battling Corruption:

1. Indication of the target

I quote from Ion Popa: „Starting from the design and organization of the project in the pyramid structure with a single decision at the top, in conjunction with the dependence and obedience of the preliminary steps towards the top of the pyramid, no other working option can be logically conceived than that in which the target nomination belonged either directly to the peak or was agreed by it”.

Who's the peak? In his conception it is about Traian Basescu, later Klaus Iohannis, but I believe that we can talk about a much broader circle, in which the decision is collective, in which the President may indicate some targets, generic or with first and last names, but I know that many other people were added to this list. George Maior, director of the SRI, and other political leaders did it.

How did you get on a list like that?

You had to be relevant to the System, mess them up or at least have the potential to do something like that. You were supposed to be part of what Americans call „establishment”, a category of people who in Romania had to disappear, to be replaced by their people.

There was a public discussion of such situations, Marian Vanghelie being one of those who first indicated the existence of such lists. It was said that there were 300 Targets in the Original Project, then the area of names increased as each participant's interest was more clearly defined. Marian Vanghelie, a former leader of the PSD, said former Prime Minister Victor Ponta, Ilie Sârbu and former SRI director George Maior had drawn up a list of 15 people in the party to be arrested because they were „uncomfortable” for both Ponta and the System.

Daniel Dragomir, former SRI officer, said in the same context that „everyone talks about these lists, I have been talking since September, these things are known. In the Service there were discussions from a long time ago, in the case of Omar Hayssam targets were Hrebenciuc and Nastase. I could see them. They weren't that on the surface.

After the referendum, the Service was given direction on a certain area: to be careful what's out there in the political circles. There was interest in all parties. (...) The interest was especially for the PSD because it was in the government, but the interest was for all parties”, Dragomir said.

2. Target processing

„Indication of the target triggered the working mechanism involving two stages: a preliminary first stage of surveillance and interception of the target by all possible means (telephony, ambient, video) carried out by the installation of specific devices, including in the bedrooms or bathrooms of dwellings. (...)

On the basis of the information from the first stage, many of the target's intimate life, was moving on to the second stage of the procedure, the target's call to the prosecutor's office, either directly to respond to allegations or intermediately as a witness. In the practice of DNA, in some situations, the approach was stopped against certain targets in the witness phase, because stopping proceedings was the result of an investigated-investigator barter”. And here we have numerous examples of how the defendant turns into a witness-whistleblower.

Ana-Maria Topoliceanu (Munteanu) is one of the classic examples. It was used by DNA against Elena Udrea, being under pressure with a bribery file that has been in the DNA files for more than 6 years, although the investigation was extremely simple. Topoliceanu (Munteanu) admitted that she took a bag with 5 million euros, that she connected the bribery offerer and the politician, spent the money, but nothing happened to her. She wasn't the target, it was Elena Udrea. Or something happened to her: the discomfort of giving statements against the one she presented as her „best friend”.

How can that be?

I've been through a phase like this myself. In 2015 I went to DNA, to a friendly discussion with prosecutor Mihaela Iorga-Morar, where for 6 hours we discussed „freely” various issues related to the „Evenimentul zilei”. So free that 15 minutes after I left DNA I got a call from a man who reproached me for everything I had told about Florian Coldea and George Major and their role in one of the DNA cases.

It was the golden days of the Binom. The time when a few boys with many stars on their shoulder strained to get their hands on Evenimentul zilei. Or more accurately, the golden period of the Protocols, in which inter-institutional communication was done directly, after all that is why General Coldea had his office at DNA...

I didn't turn into what they wanted, I didn't want to give up the magazine, so I got myself on the target list.

3. Defamation/social marginalization of the target

Here I will not use a quote, but I will paraphrase the components of the project as identified by the author of the book as the tools by which the intended purpose is achieved.

The Public Prosecutor's Office/DNA issued premature press releases ignoring the presumption of innocence, selectively leaking information from the investigation to the press, websites and NGOs, influencing public opinion through aggressive and vulgar campaigns, designed specifically for each segment of society.

Added to it were the pressure groups in the street, the political groups – parts of the project, who did not hesitate to use the harshest epithets – thief, corrupt and criminal. At this stage, the aim was to demonize the target by creating a negative perception of „criminal” that automatically extended to the entire entourage, generating a current of rejection from the economic environment for fear of reprisals.

But especially the fact that it was a warning to others that things could always be repeated on anyone in the group.

4. Humiliation of the target during the investigation

„At this stage all the components of the Project were participating. Based on the selective leakage of information on the call to the Public Prosecutor's Office of a target at a certain date and time and on the allegations against the person called, at the premises of the Public Prosecutor's Office to spontaneously gather not only the constituent  journalists, but also the groups of citizens „outraged” by the crimes committed by the target”. (...)

„At a higher stage of the completion of the humiliation of the target was the institutional component, prosecutors, who issued without exception detention warrants for 24 hours, and the research was presented to crowds of component characters with handcuffs on their hands, the show repeating itself with the public two to three times to and from the place of detention on the basis of a timetable leaked from sources from prosecutors”.

Perfectly true! I can say that I saw with my own eyes how certain journalists responded to the direct command of Laura Codruța Kovesi, or of some prosecutors, how they published information unfavourable to the defendants, refusing to ask for a point of view.

We have seen the same way that prosecutors have the attitude of investigators from the Gestapo, stiping and threatening, pretending to investigate, they have the documents already written. A simulacrum of respect for rights, in which no one believes anymore, judge, prosecutor, lawyer, the only naïve being the one brought before them.

5. Falsification of evidence. Blackmail

„With the declassified protocols concluded between the Prosecutor General's Office and the SRI and their declaration as unlawful by constitutional decision in conjunction with the „defection” of some human resource links that component the project, the serious abuses in the acquisition and administration of evidence in the overwhelming cases investigated by DNA have exploded”.

Here I wrote I think enough in the series We Are the State, discovering with surprise how in the SRI activity reports were passed to the realizations blatant violation of the law by involving intelligence officers in the investigation of criminal cases.

But in terms of falsifying evidence, I can add from my own experience. In the Baneasa Farm File, the intercept  transcripts were crudely falsified. Not to mention that the prosecutor's signature on them was purely formal, no one had participated in their transcription, but had put them on file as they had come from the SRI.

During the investigation the prosecutor Deca falsified the words of the Prince and Princess, as we have shown since Brasov. In the same sense, I expressly asked to what extent the position in the press of the defendant Andronic „contributed in any way to the cartel you had with the group”, the defendant Paul of Romania replies „He did not contribute in any positive way”, which is NOT found in the written statement.

There are dozens of examples like this

Naturally, it confuses the original scenario, or at least as described in the Binom Torture Guide...

There are dozens of examples like this, they have been referred to the courts, but have not interested anyone. Meanwhile, the counterfeiters have retired. Special pension...

These things, however, would not have been possible without some judges, not many, two or three, approving tens of thousands of national security surveillance warrants, some of them out of need, being blackmailed with their own files, others out of a sense of justice who does not care about the law. The opera was beautifully placed on the page by slavish prosecutors.

6. Removal from public/economic life

„The elimination of its target and influence from the environment and the group in which it actively manifests itself is the ultimate goal of the entire procedure for the implementation of the project, and from this point of view, the annual activity reports of DNA, in conjunction with the annual CVM reports, usually identical, the crowd of those excluded from public life and the function of dignity occupied by them were shown as hunting trophies, at the top of the list being ministers, deputies, senators, magistrates, etc.

The first option was convictions at all costs, being prominent personalities, either by their status as a national political leader or by businessmen with great influence, a trade union leader, football club owners, journalists. (...)

The second option of elimination did not necessarily and sometimes not necessarily at all target a possible conviction and strictly just the disappearance of the target from the public landscape of influence or decision.”

I can testify to the relentless mechanism built within the Project

And here I can testify to the relentless mechanism built within the Project. But about these things I'll come back. As promised, I will only write about the really important things.

But I would conclude with one of the most disturbing conclusions of the former judge Ion Popa: Have you ever wondered why none of the American, French, Dutch or German firms that paid bribes to Romanian officials were indicted by DNA, always being on the right side, as a whistleblower witness...