Far-right party AUR resurrects the slogan of the former communist Securitate at the „We are not selling our country!” rally. The Securitate businessmen of the 1990s have been embezzling Romania under the pretext of protecting its resources

The extremist party AUR is organizing a protest at the Parliament on Saturday May 6th with the revised title „Defend Romania, the children, the wealth, the country!”. But the original title was ” We are not selling our country!”, according to Google cache. The original title is still used by some AUR branches, such as AUR Buftea. The slogan „We’re not selling our country!” was the pretext under which dozens of former secret agents and politicians plundered Romania’s economy in the 1990s. They thus stopped any economic modernization. AUR is bound by many threads to reservists in the security establishment.

• Right from the first months of 1990, immediately after the fall of communism, the most liberal part of society and the political class demanded the opening up of the Romanian economy, the partial or total privatization of companies that urgently needed to be revamped and capitalized. The response of the exponents of the old communist regime was violent: miners’ strikes resulting in deaths and injuries, violent protests by politically controlled trade unions, virulent campaigns by parties such as the FSN/PDSR (the predecessors of the PSD) and România Mare (led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor). The effect? Until the 2000s, the economy was controlled with an iron fist by the exponents of the old Securitate (the repressive apparatus of the Romanian Communist Party), in the almost total absence of any infusion of foreign capital.

Simion rallies against ‘poisonous’ projects

George Simion, president of AUR, used at a party event on Wednesday exactly the arguments used by the miners, the FSN, and the Romania Mare Party to reject privatizations. „All these poisonous, dangerous laws are coming to the Chamber of Deputies, which will privatize and force all state-owned companies – Hidroelectrica, Salrom, Romsilva – to be listed on the stock exchange. Well, why should they be listed on the stock exchange, why do we need to invest in Romsilva or Hidroelectrica? (…) All these harmful projects derive from the implementation of the damaging NRRP”.

However, the experience of the last three decades has shown that the listing of minority stakes on the stock exchange or the privatization of majority stakes in state-owned companies has led to the capitalization, modernization, and increased economic performance of state-owned companies. Stock exchange listings have led to increased transparency, active involvement of minority shareholders, and the exposure of corruption from within. In contrast, most companies with exclusively state capital have negative economic performances: CFR SA, Tarom, CFR Marfă, etc.

Under the initial slogan „We don’t sell our country”, replaced at some point by „We defend Romania, our children, our wealth, our country!”, AUR is organizing a protest in front of the Parliament, at Izvor Park, on Saturday 6 May.

„On 6 May we are protesting against the anti-national and anti-family laws that the ruling coalition wants to promote. The more we are, the more we can stop projects like Pl-x 145, Pl-x 144, Pl-x 143, Pl-x 47 or the Education Laws!”, reads the event description.

In reality, all four bills concern attempts to modernize the state. Thus, PL-x No 145/2023 is a draft law on the organization of the work of preventing the separation of children from their families. The draft aims to establish clear rules for separating children from their families. The government, the initiator of the project, claims that the draft will prevent possible abuses, while the AUR denounces the taking of children away from their families.

Pl-x 144 concerns the profession of bailiff and introduces new provisions on the duties, rights, and obligations of bailiffs. Pl-x 47 is a draft law on sustainable urban mobility and aims to establish the framework within which local development policies are made and implemented, in order to lead to less pollution, development of public transport, reduction of time spent in traffic, reduction of the number of cars in cities, creation of infrastructure for bicycles, etc. AUR claims that the draft would lead to the transformation of cities into prisons, turning the urban concept called „15-minute city” into a real conspiracy theory (see more details in a Factual analysis).

Finally, Pl-x 143 is about improving the way state-owned companies are run. This is the project denounced by George Simion as „venomous”, and which would lead to the listing of minority stakes in state-owned companies.

Simion’s links to people in military systems

George Simion and AUR have strong connections with reservists in the military system and with current military personnel in the army, police, and intelligence services.

Military officers Nicolae Roman and Francisc Tobă, associated with the bloody repression of the 1989 Revolution, became AUR deputies after the 2020 elections. Epochtimes-romania.ro notes that Tobă’s name appears in the file related to the repression that took place in Sibiu in 1989, a case with over 700 victims (dead, wounded and deprived of their freedom), which was closed in 2010. The name of General Nicolae Roman (b. 18 April 1956), another controversial career soldier, is also linked to the bloody attempts to suppress the 1989 Revolution, only this time in Timișoara. Both were expelled from the AUR parliamentary group after the public scandals emerged.

On the other hand, the „Onoare si Patrie”(„Honor and Fatherland”-editor note) Association, where the current AUR leader George Simion was vice-president, received donations and sponsorships of more than 50,000 euros from political leaders, companies with influence in the public sphere, as well as from military units of the Protection and Guard Service (SPP) and in connection with Intelligence Service (SRI), revealed a PRESShub article citing the organization’s financial transactions.

The Association „Honor and Fatherland” was part of the unionist platform Action 2012, the main umbrella under which George Simion, currently co-president and AUR MP, campaigned for the union of Moldova with Romania.

Among the military units that donated were UM 0472 Bucharest (SRI) and UM 0149 (SPP). Among the companies that donated to the unionist movement coordinated by George Simion were RCS&RDS (45,000 lei in February 2014), and Luxten Lighting Company SA. A donation also came from The Group Foundation, an NGO of The Group advertising company, run by Mihaela Nicola who wrote in 2014 for Intelligence magazine, a publication owned by the SRI.

Further: The National Foundation for Romanians Abroad (FNRP), through which George Simion collected his wedding gift, is funded by the Romanian Foreign Intelligence (SIE) generals now in reserve, an investigation by Captura.ro shows. Among the main sponsors of the news agency published by the foundation is the Borsec mineral water bottling company (Romaqua Grup), run for over a decade by several intelligence officers: retired General Constantin Rotaru (deputy director of the Foreign Intelligence Service), Ioan Păun,
general (r) SIE, Emilian Ivan general (r) SIE.

The old Securitate agents, the waverers of the slogan „We are not selling our country”. They stole it.

The two big parties that used the idea „We are not selling our country” in one form or another were the FSN (Ion Iliescu) and Romania Mare (Corneliu Vadim Tudor).

Ion Iliescu, former leader of the Communist Party, quickly surrounded himself after taking power with former members of the Securitate, the political police of the Communist regime that claimed thousands of victims through assassinations and torture (see the report of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, 2006). Among the leading secret agents promoted by Iliescu were Mihai Caraman (head of the SIE), Tudor Tănase (head of the Special Telecommunication Service-STS), and Victor Marcu (deputy SRI).

Corneliu Vadim Tudor was the house poet of former dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu during the communist period. He was repeatedly accused of collaborating with the Securitate. He was a leading contributor to the Communist magazine Săptămâna, known to be controlled by the Communist Security.

One of the instruments through which the Iliescu regime prevented any economic modernization was Miron Cozma, the leader of the powerful miners’ unions. He led three miners’ strikes that left dozens dead and thousands injured: in 1990, 1991, and 1999. According to Adevărul, Miron Cozma was a Securitate informer, writing several briefing notes. The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives CNSAS, referred to it by the Forța Civica organization, studied Cozma’s file and issued a certificate stating that the former miners’ leader had „provided information to the Securitate”, as the source „Paul”, without being considered a collaborator.

Who were the beneficiaries of „We are not selling our country”

The 1990s, dominated by the rejection of any foreign capital inflow, were dominated by Romanian businessmen with roots in the old security. Here are some of these exponents of Romanian capitalism.

Ioan Niculae (Interagro). He bought the tobacco industry, the Astra Ploiesti refinery, and several chemical fertilizer plants. Many businesses have been embezzled. He was sentenced to prison for corruption. He was a former security officer, according to former SRI chief George Maior in an interview with Digi24.

Dan Voiculescu. He bought the Institute for Food Research (ICA), founded the Grivco holding company which constantly did business with the state, founded the Antenna press trust, and was sentenced to prison for corruption. He was declared a collaborator of the Securitate by a final decision of the High Court of Cassation and Justice.

Puiu Popoviciu and Nicolae Badea. Two of the first „capitalists” after the fall of communism. They are the sons-in-law of former communist leader Ion Dincă, the first deputy prime minister. According to ZF, Dincă’s two daughters, Doina (Puiu Popoviciu’s wife) and Liliana (Nicolae Badea’s ex-wife), were counter-espionage officers.

Popoviciu and Badea became representatives in Romania of international corporations such as PizzaHut, KFC and Ikea.

Puiu Popoviciu was sentenced to 7 years of effective imprisonment in August 2017 in a corruption case. He is in England and has persuaded a British court not to extradite him. Nicolae Badea was indicted by National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) in 2021 in a case of fraud with European funds.

What impact has the „We are not selling our country!” policy had?

„We are not selling our country!” was tantamount to the refusal of the Romanian state, dominated by former Securitate and former communist leaders in the 2nd and 3rd echelons, to accept the privatization of Romanian companies to foreign investors.

Foreign capital was accused of coming to Romania only to make a profit and sell off the national resources. As a result, large production units – industry, banks, commerce, etc. – were devastated and then either closed down or sold at bargain prices to Romanian businessmen.

Romania stagnated for a decade, during which time the gap with both the old EU member states and its neighbors in the region, especially Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, widened.