Romania’s controversial right-wing nationalist AUR party (‘Alliance for the Union of Romanians’) has become the center of a major scandal after sources from the country’s General Prosecutor’s Office revealed to the daily Digi24 that the party leader, George Simion, is being investigated for instigating the falsification of tens of thousands of campaign signatures needed for the launch of a close ally’s independent bid for the EU Parliament.
After Digi24 acquired the scoop from an unnamed judicial source, the Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the authenticity of the story on Wednesday, June 5th, but refrained from naming either Simion or AUR in its statement.
“In April 2024, the leader of a parliamentary party, a member of parliament, instigated, both directly and through intermediaries, several members of a political party and a number of employees of the Romanian Parliament who were working for that political party, to forge several thousand lists of supporters necessary for an independent candidate to stand for election to the European Parliament on 9 June 2024,” the official statement reads.
The independent candidate in question, and the investigation’s primary target, is Silvestru Șoșoacă—the former husband of Diana Șoșoacă, an AUR senator who made a name for herself by submitting a bill that aimed to annex five Ukrainian territories.
The PO’s statement goes into further details of what allegedly went down on April 9th, providing enough for journalists to easily identify Simion behind the story.
According to the charge, Simion “requested emergency mobilization” of some 50 AUR activists at the party’s headquarters to complete the lists just before the official deadline two days later by copying the data of supporters who had previously signed the AUR’s own campaign lists and then forging their signatures.
Since reaching the 100,000 threshold in less than two days was near “impossible”—as Simion himself put it a few days before the revelations—the party leader was looking for more activists.
“[Simion] sent voice messages to the [party’s] communication groups, and in cases when certain people refused to comply, he contacted them directly to urge them to travel to the organizations’ headquarters for the purpose shown,” the PO’s statement says.
According to the charge, the AUR activists at one point “began to photocopy the previously falsified lists,” and not only a few but “several thousands” of pages.
In a response posted on his website, the AUR leader denied the allegations and accused the government as well as the Romanian ‘deep state” of trying to intimidate his supporters and discredit his party just days before the EU elections out of fear of AUR’s popularity.
“I expected [PM] Ciolacu to make a move this week, to try to manipulate public opinion to get AUR out of the election race, but I didn’t think he was so desperate as to send his lackeys to pick up innocent people from their homes to take them to the prosecutor’s office, where they are intimidated and threatened into giving false statements about me,” Simion wrote.
“You want to ban AUR? You want to put me in handcuffs? Then you’ll have to pass the vote of Romanians this Sunday! We’ll see, you bastards!”
AUR is currently polling in third place with 17%, looking to gain 4 seats in the European parliament out of Romania’s 33.
