Former Environment Minister Costel Alexe is being prosecuted by prosecutors from the National Anticorruption Directorate, being accused of taking bribes and instigating to embezzlement.

The Minister of Justice, Stelian Ion, sent on Tuesday to the General Prosecutor Gabriela Scutea the request approved by the President Klaus Iohannis regarding the beginning of the criminal investigation of the former minister.

According to a DNA release, sent to Agerpres on Thursday, following the fulfillment of the necessary legal and constitutional conditions, the prosecutors from the Anti-Corruption Section ordered the opening of the criminal investigation against Costel Alexe.

In the same case, a person with a management position in a company with a steel activity is also being investigated for bribery and embezzlement.

Prosecutors note in the ordinance that between March and April 2020, Costel Alexe, as Minister of Environment, Water and Forests, allegedly demanded, directly from a person in charge of a steel plant, the suspect in question, various sheet metal products (corrugated iron, square pipe, rectangular pipe and sheet metal rolls) in connection with the performance of its duties related to the allocation, free of charge, of greenhouse gas emission allowances and the monitoring of measures taken by this factory for closing a non-compliant landfill – slag dump.

The deposit, according to investigators, is one of the 68 for which Romania was convicted by the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2018 for failing to fulfill its obligation as an EU member state to close them as soon as possible. As a result, Romania must periodically report the situation of these deposits.