The real parallel state. How Darius Vîlcov takes over one institution after another, building an army of orcs

Darius Vîlcov is turning out to be a serious threat to Romania’s financial stability. Sentenced to 8 years in the lower courts for corruption, an outspoken critic of the West, grown in Slatina, this character oversteps red lines and takes over institutions at an astonishing speed.

The latest feat of the man who essentially wrote the PSD Bible – the government program – is the full capture of the fiscal control activity. Through the two obedient stooges heading ANAF (the non-existent Mihaela Triculescu) and the National Prognosis Commission (the eternal and faithful Ion Ghizdeanu), Vîlcov brokered an agreement that places the mechanism for triggering the fiscal control of companies in the hands of the Prognosis Commission.

The Prognosis Commission is totally subservient to Vîlcov, which means that he now holds a formidable control lever in this area. In a year with two rounds of elections, with an increasingly politicized ANAF (Fiscal authority) at the local level, this institution can turn into an efficient mechanism for controlling electoral funds at the hands of counselor Vîlcov.

The capture of the fiscal authority comes after the same Vîlcov, with Dragnea’s permission, has placed stooges at the head of the National Medicines Agency and the National Health Insurance House, institutions with great influence over markets and huge budgets of tens of billions of lei .

A month ago, the same Vîlcov initiated one of the most odious forms of pressure on the business environment, Emergency Decree 114. The “greed tax”, as baptized by the man caught with paintings and gold lingots hidden in a tomb, has upset key economic sectors: banking, energy and telecommunications.

Had he stopped here, things could have been kept under control. The problem is that through the levy tax mechanism, ie the tax on the assets of commercial banks, Vîlcov has de facto cut off one of the conduits through which the Central Bank implements its monetary policy: the establishment of the interest rate.

The Romanian Central Bank’s independence and credibility are essential attributes Without them, it would not have been possible, for example, to have a country-wide agreement, such as the Vienna agreement of 2009, whereby parent banks agreed to capitalize their subsidiaries in the financial crisis.

Without the anchors of the independence and credibility of the Romanian Central Bank, which would give the financial markets the guarantee that monetary policy is not influenced by political parties, any foreign markets crisis will shatter Romania. However, with an obedient stooge as potential governor, we shall soon find ourselves in that situation.

Vîlcov, a mediocre corner-shop economist, is not solely to blame for the current situation. Liviu Dragnea is the one who props him, he, the engineer who failed his qualifications and understands economics just as well as Prime Minister Dăncilă understands regional policy in the Western Balkans. With these two men in charge of Romania’s course, the road to an internal crisis is practically a given.

Don’t think Darius Vâlcov is a mere public servant, lost in the maze of government. Vâlcov is imposed by Dragnea to Prime Minister Dăncilă, he passes as the de facto head of cabinet and the closest man to the PSD leader. The two of them spend their holidays and chart the country’s course together with their lovers in Scrovistea.

Traducerea: Ruxandra Stoicescu