Journalists saw the "hand of Moscow" behind former NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Joane, who is now running for president of Romania. The local edition writes about it today, October 1 digi24.ro .
The investigation was conducted by journalists of The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) network, who established that Joane Raresh Manescu, the head of the election campaign, owns a joint business with Russian entrepreneur Alexei Kozlov, who does business in Romania through an Estonian firm.
According to official information, on May 31, the Romanian Trade Register registered the first constituent document of Kozlov's company and Manescu. The latter claims that he has not been cooperating with Joan for 5 months, and the former NATO official assures that he "did not have and does not have any information about the affairs of Mr. Rares Manescu."
The source claims that Kozlov, under the pseudonym Alex Krepchinsky, publishes materials on social networks in support of the Russian army on Ukraine. He also has startups in the Republic of Moldova and Romania.
The publication also had questions for Mircea Joane himself, who was also suspected of having secret ties with Moscow. In 2009, the press reported on his private visit to the Russian capital, where he met with an adviser to the then President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. At that time, Joane was the chairman of the Romanian Senate. Meeting, writes digi24.ro It was allegedly organized by a Russian businessman who then had interests in the energy sector of Romania and "was an employee of the GRU."
"I can only confirm that Mircea Joane was in Moscow. To get the full picture, remember that after April I said, "It's good that he's leaving the Supreme Council of National Defense (CSAT)." I meant exactly that: you can't be a CSAT vice-president and go to meetings organized in Moscow without informing the CSAT president about it," commented former Romanian President Traian Basescu.
In 2011, Wikileaks published a telegram in which the US Embassy in Bucharest noted that "the great mystery is how Joan gets closer to Russia," and mentioned the existence of two of his secret visits to Moscow. Then the politician and the future deputy Secretary General of NATO did not respond to these accusations in any way.
As EADaily reported, NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Joane left this post in September and announced that he would run for president of Romania. According to him, the country is ready "for important changes" and the presidential elections of 2024 will be the most important in the last 20 years. He added that "this is a matter of internal cuisine, everything is discussed at the level of the NATO leadership."