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Romanian ex-MEP sentenced to three years jail for graft

24 February 2016, 11:37 CET

(BUCHAREST) - A Romanian ex-member of the European Parliament has been sentenced to three years in jail for agreeing to accept bribes to influence European legislation, the country's top court said Wednesday.

Adrian Severin, a former Romanian foreign minister, and two other MEPs were secretly filmed in 2010 by undercover reporters from Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, discussing payments in return for tabling favourable amendments.

In a ruling late Tuesday, the High Court of Cassation and Justice handed Severin, 61, a term of three years and three months for agreeing to be paid up to 100,000 euros ($110,000) a year to influence the drafting of EU laws.

Reacting to his sentencing in a Facebook post Severin called it a "monstrous" ruling and vowed to appeal.

The case against Severin was brought by Romania's anti-corruption agency DNA.

Video footage shot by the Times reporters posing as lobbyists showed him agreeing to be paid 4,000 euros a day for his work, prosecutors said.

In a later email to his pretend paymasters he informed them that the amendment they sought had been submitted and attached a bill for 12,000 euros.

Severin, who served as foreign minister in 1996 and 1997, refused to resign his MEP seat over the scandal, claiming he had done nothing that was "illegal or against any normal behaviour".

The two other MEPs caught up in the scandal, Austrian former interior minister Ernst Strasser and Slovenian former foreign minister Zoran Thaler, were also given jail terms after trials in their countries.

In January 2013, Strasser was sentenced to four years behind bars, reduced on appeal to three.

In 2014, Thaler received a two-and-a-half year sentence and a fine of 32,250 euros.

mr/cb/txw

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