Horațiu Potra, a former member of the French Foreign Legion who is suspected of plotting to install failed presidential candidate Călin Georgescu in power by force was taken to court on Monday.
Potra, 55, was brought under escort to the headquarters of the Prosecutor General’s Office on Monday to be questioned on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, in connection with the money earned in Congo.
He was taken into custody Thursday on charges of attempting to subvert the constitutional order, following allegations he had helped plan a violent coup during last December’s fraught election period.
He was extradited from Dubai, where he had been detained since Sept. 24 with his son and grandson amid an investigation of a plot to use force to install Georgescu in power.
Prosecutors formally charged Georgescu, Horațiu and Dorian and a group of alleged mercenaries on Sept. 16 accusing them of having planned to hijack a protest supporting Georgescu after a top court cancelled the December 2024 presidential elections.
Prosecutors said the armed group had intended to provoke large-scale violence, which in turn would have justified overthrowing Romania’s constitutional order and transferring political power by force.
Georgescu, a NATO skeptic, won the Nov. 24 first round of the election, but the Constitutional Court annulled the race over alleged irregularities and concerns of foreign interference. He was later barred from the May rerun amid further allegations of Russian involvement.
Potra who holds Romanian and French citizenship served five years in the French Foreign Legion, an elite military unit of the French army. He later spent nearly three decades in Africa as a private security operative for political leaders and business figures.
He met Georgescu at a horse ranch the day after the court annulled the election after Georgescu asked him for “support” in the upcoming presidential election.
The next day, he was arrested en route to Bucharest in a convoy allegedly transporting armed men who intended to incite riots.
Georgescu and Potra have dismissed the allegations against them, while their supporters see the charges as politically motivated.
