EXCLUSIVE Dragnea met „system man” Gabriel Oprea in a restaurant to discuss a possible PSD – UNPR alliance

Liviu Dragnea and Gabriel Oprea met in a restaurant in Bucharest to discuss a possible alliance between PSD and UNPR, sources told G4Media.ro. The meeting took place on Thursday, November 8, at a restaurant of the Ministry of the Interior on Ştirbei Voda, where Gabriel Oprea celebrated Saints Mihail and Gavril day. By the looks of it, this would be the very restaurant that Oprea visited one evening in October 2015 when police officer Bogdan Gigina, who escorted the former interior minister’s motorcade on a motorcycle, suffered a crash after which he died.

On the one hand, Dragnea’s rapprochement with Gabriel Oprea is motivated by the good relations Oprea maintained and still maintains with the „parallel state” denounced and attacked by the PSD leader repeatedly. On the other hand, Oprea boasts votes of reservists in the military structures. In early 2016, Liviu Dragnea talked with Oprea about a possible alliance with UNPR, but Oprea then decided to merge with Traian Basescu’s PMP, which he later denounced.

According to sources, Codrin Ştefănescu and Marian Oprisan also participated at the Dragnea – Oprea meeting last week. Note that at the beginning of the year Dragnea accused Oprea of being the man of the „parallel state” and revealed that Oprea has called General Coldea on the phone before his very eyes.

After Codrin Stefanescu asked him at the beginning of March to give explanations to the Romanian Information Service Control Commission on events he attended, which had been organized by the Service, Dragnea answered ironically: „I think Mr. Codrin Ştefănescu can ask for these explanations from his comrade Gabriel Oprea, from his associate, Gabriel Oprea, who certainly has nothing to do with the system. ”

After this episode, Gabriel Oprea reminded PSD President, Liviu Dragnea, of the support he would have given him in two important moments of his political career.

„In 2004, when I was minister of public administration Teleorman County Council President Dragnea asked me to help him become the head of the PSD County Council presidents. At that time, PSD had won the presidency of 17 County Councils. Because he asked me to help him, I met him at Ion Ionescu’s HQ from Brad and I persuaded him to vote for Dragnea. That’s how comrade Liviu came to be the political chief of the County Council chairmen of the party (…) In 2015, he again asked for my support, this time as chairman of UNPR. He asked me to help him to be elected PSD president, in the context of Victor Ponta’s Facebook resignation. He came to have a glass of wine at UNPR, as all the press here knows and asked me to support him. Liviu became the president of PSD with my help and with UNPR support. A comrade in need a comrade indeed, „wrote Oprea on Facebook in March 2018.

In response to Oprea’s posting, Liviu Dragnea said: „I read this editorial by Mr. Oprea and I did not think he could make such a mistake (…) I really do not understand what got into him. I did not want to recall that episode. It is rather bad for him and the Romanian Information Service. ”

A few days later, Dragnea revealed that former UNPR leader Gabriel Oprea told him in 2015 after speaking to Florian Coldea in his presence that Valeriu Zgonea should have become PSD chairman after Victor Ponta’s resignation.

„Mr. Oprea told me,” I understand from “rule of law” that Zgonea should be number one in the party and you number two. You and I will lead and Zgonea will be like that. ” I said, „Gabi, I do not know what you mean, but I will run for presidency on Wednesday, and I think I will be elected PSD acting president”. „Well, I can not, I did not understand that.” He got hold of the phone and called the “rule of law”. I do not know whom he was talking to, but he told them him, „Liviu does not know anything of what you have told me, that is, he is running and he says he will win.” I come with him to you. And I say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not going anywhere, you told me you wanted to talk, I talked, I told you I’d run, I think I’ll win, I do not know what you spoke, whom you spoke to ». He told me he spoke to Coldea on the phone. ”

We recall that at the beginning of the year the PSD set up an investigative commission that adopted a report on the 2009 presidential election after the so-called scandal of the meeting in „Oprea’s living room” broke out in the press. On the night of November 16-17, 2009, the participants to the meeting seem to have been the head of RSI, George Maior, former RSI deputy, Florian Coldea, former NAD chief, Laura Codruta Kovesi, journalist Dan Andronic, former mayor of Sector 2, Niculae Onţanu and Anghel Iordănescu.

At the beginning of May 2018, NAD prosecutors sued former Deputy Prime Minister Gabriel Oprea and the manager of the company who dug the pit where policeman Gigina met his end while leading the official motorcade accompanying Oprea. Both are accused of murder. In the same file, prosecutors have renounced the accusation of abuse of service in both the case of Gabriel Oprea and in the case of the former general prosecutor Tiberiu Niţu.

Traducerea: Ruxandra Stoicescu