The recently sacked chief executive of TAROM (RO, Bucharest Henri Coanda), Madalina Mezei, has accused outgoing Romanian Transport Minister Răzvan-Alexandru Cuc of requesting that she purposefully delay flights of opposition MPs to Bucharest to prevent them from attending a no-confidence vote in the government of Prime Minister Viorica Dancila, bne IntelliNews has reported.
The opposition narrowly won the ballot on October 10 by just five votes.
Mezei first made the accusation at a news conference at Tarom’s headquarters on October 18. She accused Cuc of asking her to stop five domestic flights from arriving in the capital city in time for the parliamentary session. She was dismissed from her job shortly afterwards.
Mezei testified under oath at the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) on October 21 that the minister had asked her to keep at least one flight from departing.
“The DNA is following up accusations against Razvan Cuc who had asked former Tarom CEO Mezei Madalina to hold up some planes on the day of the censorship motion to prevent MPs from travelling from the provinces to Bucharest to vote on the censorship motion,” she wrote on her Facebook page on October 18.
Cuc claimed that Mezei left the flag carrier because she had been “frustrated” at failing to reverse losses. Tarom has lost more than RON3 billion leu (USD700 million) over the last ten years.
But he later admitted to requesting a list of flights carrying opposition MPs to the no-confidence vote - to make sure they all arrived safely, he said.
The airline is now on its sixth interim CEO this year. Mezei's replacement, Valentin Gvinda, a pilot, was appointed by the board of directors only to refuse the offer after conducting “a brief analysis of the situation the company faces”. The board then said in a statement on October 21 that George Costin Barbu, a former head of the civil aviation school, had been appointed for a four-month term.
