The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating contracts worth 20 million euros allegedly given by the Romanian health minister to his former partners at the World Health Organization (WHO) for consultancy services during the pandemic, a Romanian lawmaker said.
The probe centers on whether it was legitimate and legal for Health Minister Alexandru Rafila to award European Union funds for the alleged contracts in this way, according to Emanuel Ungureanu, lawmaker of the opposition Save Romania Union (USR).
The USR party which filed the complaint to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office several month ago triggering the probe said the money should have been spent on “building new hospitals not on consultancy,”Emanuel Ungureanu wrote on Tuesday.
Heath Minister Alexandru Rafila has not reacted to the development which became public on Tuesday. Universul.net has contacted the health ministry for a response.
Mr.Ungureanu filed a complaint to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in March 2024. Previously, he wrote to former Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca about the alleged contracts who sent internal auditors to the ministry, he told Universul.net, adding there was no communication about the outcome of the audit.
Universul.net has contacted the Luxembourg-headquartered EPPO.
Mr. Ungureanu, who is also vice-president of the Health Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, said European recovery funds can be used for consultancy in cases where the health or other ministries are lacking specialists in a certain field.
In his note, Mr. Ungureanu claimed that Mr. Rafila handed out contracts on a discretionary basis to former partners in the WHO and has been secretive about them.
“He has never spoken publicly about these contracts,” Mr. Ungureanu said in a phone interview with Universul.net. “These (European) funds (Ed’s note: to the WHO) should be stopped when there is no justification.”
“The contracts, signed by Alexandru Rafila with his former WHO partners raise huge suspicions that they constituted acts of abuse of office…In addition, there is a suspicion that some of the funds granted from the RRF for consultancy overlap with other amounts granted, for the same type of activities, to other institutions, such as the National Authority for Quality Management in Health,” he said.
Mr. Rafila was a member of WHO’s Executive Committee of between 2014 and 2017.He also was Romania’s WHO representative on the steering committee until 2021, until he was appointed health minister.
Romania’s health system is chronically underfunded and plagued by politicized management and corruption. Thousands of medics have emigrated in recent years.
