We assume that even the most ill-informed of visitors to Bucharest Life is aware of the fact that former Romanian prime minister Adrian Nastase was sentenced to two years in prison on Monday for corruption. Nastase remains a free man for the time being, pending an appeal. Here is the Reuters report on the matter.

Anyway, The Economist’s man in these parts posted this on the Eastern Approaches blog last night. It is a very good assessment of the case.

We particularly like the line:

The president has a reputation for seeking to bring corruption charges against his opponents.

As someone suggested to us this morning, the post must have taken ‘some serious lawyering.’

Oh dear

The PDL senator Iulian Urban came up with – on paper – a sound idea last week:
Fines for driving offences should vary according to the income of the offender.

A sound idea indeed, although not entirely original: Finland has had a similar system in place for years. Other countries probably do too.

But think about it for more than two minutes and it falls apart, at least in a Romanian context.

Few Romanians have their full salary recorded in their cartea de munca. Though the low, flat rate of income tax introduced by the Tariceanu government in 2004 cut much tax evasion, high salary taxes mean that many employers still pay a part of staff salaries in cash, no questions asked, no payment recorded.

This means that those who should in theory receive far higher fines for traffic offences would in fact pay much the same as the poorest Romanians. This alone, in our book, makes Urban’s plan a non-starter. It also makes you think about what planet Romanian parliamentarians live on, or what country they think they live in. It isn’t Kansas. Or Finland.

We have a far simpler, and, we would add, more egalitarian solution: the value of the fine should to tied to the value or power of the offending vehicle. Those driving Dacias would pay less that the drivers of Bemves.

Alas, we can’t see such an idea catching on amongst Romania’s Bemve driving parliamentarians.

Indeed, before they go changing the current cod rutier (highway code), they might want to have the traffic police start enforcing the current one.

Back in January we made a few predictions for the coming year. Not all of them have so far been entirely accurate (though the year is still young), but today, one proved to be spot on.

We said that Anamaria Straus, a wealthy business woman who killed a young student, Tatiana Duplei, on Sos. Kiseleff last year (Straus did not stop at a pedestrian crossing) would not serve a prison sentence.

This morning she was sentenced to two years in prison. Suspended, of course. She also has to pay €135,000 to the student’s family, the kind of money we would assume wealthy people like Straus no doubt have in change down the back of the sofa. She will also, poor thing, have to attend some road safety classes.

The Romanian justice system. Dontcha just love it?

Full story here.