A scoundrel in white coat with pretensions of a candidate

Dr. Cătălin Cîrstoiu mocked an entire country on B1TV Tuesday evening, explaining that he worked voluntarily, out of dedication, for his own clinic after an investigation by HotNews.ro revealed how, as manager of the University Hospital in Bucharest, he directed patients to the private clinic where he and his wife are shareholders. This is a classic example of misconduct widely practiced by public sector doctors who also own private clinics. It is a scandalous phenomenon tolerated by state institutions, except that all the other cunning stethoscope wielders are not running for office. Dr. Cîrstoiu does not present himself to the public as just a scoundrel in a white coat; he seeks the votes of Bucharest’s electorate from the position of a pretentious candidate.

You feel spat in the face, taken for a fool by candidate Cîrstoiu when he insists he never took patients from the state hospital to his private practice, but that he helped his colleagues for purely humanitarian reasons. „I did not take any money, I did this out of my personal devotion,” explained the scoundrel in a white coat without blinking. A half-truth, since Dr. Cîrstoiu reports in his wealth declaration tens of thousands of euros earned annually from the hospital where he is a shareholder with his wife.

What the scoundrel in a white coat is saying is that you media fools haven’t caught me; I’m not stupid enough to break the law like the last amateur. Sure, the law prohibits me from engaging in any activity other than teaching in my capacity as a public manager, but I’ve found a loophole. I haven’t signed any employment contract; I have no legal relationship with my own hospital. Thus, I gracefully avoided any conflict of interest. Ah, sure, I work as a volunteer, out of devotion, but beware, I do not directly earn any money from the patients directed by residents to my private clinic. Beat that!

The scoundrel in the white coat must be very pleased with himself. Legally, he’s covered perfectly. Although HotNews.ro published plenty of evidence that Dr. Cîrstoiu continued to practice medicine at his private clinic, providing consultations and later fattening his campaign coffers with payments from patients for PSD-PNL, the doctor smugly tells everyone with the ultimate argument that legally this situation cannot be sanctioned by state institutions because he knows how to dodge.

These days, Dr. Cîrstoiu tells us that if you’re smart, you always find a way to skirt the law. A lesson in trickery, as if given by the last neighborhood schemer.

That’s how you make money for a BMW X6, carefully intertwining the work as manager of a public institution with that as a „volunteer” doctor at his own clinic, shuffling patients from one place to another, always attentive to the paperwork. Subsequently, the scoundrel in the white coat legally extracts money in the form of dividends, without needing to be formally employed. In this way, the doctor cunningly avoids the law and now laughs in the faces of all who think they’ve caught him.

The rogue in a white coat has announced he will not withdraw from the race for Bucharest and that next week, after officially submitting his candidacy, he will return with more explanations. If this defiant attitude, of a streetwise wheeler-dealer, came from someone like Piedone, it would be no surprise. But Dr. Cătălin Cîrstoiu can hardly contain himself when he talks about his own diligence, morality, and integrity.

We learn on this occasion that this doctor is not only totally unsuitable when, for instance, drops his BMW and takes  the subway to appear down-to-earth and of an arrogance impossible to conceal, but also a real threat to public funds.

The PSD-PNL alliance should have withdrawn Cătălin Cîrstoiu yesterday, not waited until Monday. A scoundrel in white coat who publicly explains how cleverly he dodges the law has no place at the City Hall of the Capital, where he manages an annual budget of 10 billion lei. Bucharest has already been led by a scoundrel in a white coat, and now the Romanian state struggles to bring him back from Greece, where he fled to escape prison.