We continue our series of materials featuring interesting people and current topics. This is a beginning we hope will benefit our viewers and readers. If previously we discussed the fate of Romanian tourism, today we turn to an equally thorny issue: a reality that can evoke the political persecutions of the Stalinist era, now unfolding right under the nose of the European institutions of which our country is a part.**
It is no longer a mystery to anyone that many libraries have begun to be hidden; literature labeled by current censorship institutions with the stigma of political incorrectness has started to be tracked, its owners investigated and arrested. But what if these laws actually conceal entirely different interests and are used merely as a long arm against those who denounce the corruption of certain officials or interests that themselves become risks to national security?
Codruț Burdujan conducted an interview with Mihai Rapcea about the context in which the well-known lawyer and vlogger has come under pressure from a criminal investigation file centered on the offense of opinion established by the Vexler Law. Many Romanians are asking what his situation is after his Facebook and TikTok accounts were closed. As is already known, he has faced intimidation pressures because he persistently refused to remain silent, to stop testing, in the name of the many, the limits of a democracy won through heavy sacrifices by Romanians. For all this, he must confront a tyranny masked under the appearance of laws that enforce silence. And he confronts it both professionally and at home, alongside his family.
This time, the data of the problem change. According to Mihai Rapcea’s accounts, behind the public and professional defamation, all the pressures, and the label of antisemit would lie revenge from the leadership of the Elie Wiesel Institute and the influence of a former diplomat from the US Embassy. The stake: a building worth 18 million euros, the Dacia Palace on Calea Lipscani in the capital. From here, questions can flow: is this only an isolated case? Has the Romanian state, through such practices, lost other valuable properties in Bucharest or in the provinces? We refrain from speculation; we open this subject with the desire that the competent institutions clarify citizens’ questions. We even await a right of reply at burdujan@gmail.com. A DinPort.ro material, produced together with colleagues from ArgesPlus.ro:
“The Corridors of Justice”…
**Codruț Burdujan:** Mr. Attorney Mihai Rapcea, so… what is the situation regarding what was mentioned?
**Mihai Rapcea:** Good day to everyone! Indeed, in the recent period I have entered a shadow cone. I had the surprise of finding that, together with the criminal file opened against me starting in June of this year, the Meta platform closed my Facebook account, and my TikTok account was also closed for a period. And, overall, my media exposure was greatly limited. That is, apart from one single marginal TV station, the rest showed no interest whatsoever in the subject of my file or related topics. Regarding the criminal file instrumented against me, it is a file disjoined from the “Stegarul Dac” file, my client’s – the irony(!) – who had at one point distributed on Facebook, on January 15, Mihai Eminescu’s birthday, a debatable video in which another citizen saluted a tripod that had a yellow little hand that rose, based on a sensor, whenever someone appeared in front of it.
**Codruț Burdujan:** Was it a political salute or simply a salute of respect, or… could each person interpret it as they wished?
**Mihai Rapcea:** Everyone has the freedom to interpret it as they wish. However, the project being on Eminescu’s day, it constituted a continuation of the Eminescian spirit, which was a critical spirit – first of all from the perspective of perennial values in relation to epigones, falsifiers, all those who falsify the pure nationalist spirit and who understand to climb especially on the monuments of heroes and national symbols… in order to “valorize” themselves…
**Codruț Burdujan:** …Especially for electoral purposes, “when they have nothing to say,” I would add…
**Mihai Rapcea:** Especially during electoral campaigns… I recall the moment: it was January 15, those from AUR were holding a mega collective march that made no sense. Other epigones had gathered that morning at Mihai Eminescu’s grave in Bellu Cemetery, where they delivered pompous speeches that, you know… “ring hollow from the tail”…
**Codruț Burdujan:** …But which were not backed by a past or by deeds, right?
**Mihai Rapcea:** Obviously. They were there practically only to put themselves in evidence by reference to Eminescu. We created that event – I together with another patriot. In previous years, also on Mihai Eminescu’s day, we had thought of a civic platform. For example, we set up a kind of small table (ed. note: in public places in the capital) where anyone could come and recite a few verses of the great poet or utter a few memorable words from his political, journalistic, literary or poetic work. The previous events had enjoyed great success, so we thought that this year it should be a critical moment. The critical moment had, as I said, this support – this tripod – which bore the image of Mihai Eminescu’s face, but an image generated with the help of artificial intelligence: sardonic, if you will… yes, ironic, toward the epigones. And this little hand that rose. (…ed. note: Mihai Rapcea imitates the gesture of the little hand with spread fingers, explanatory)
**Codruț Burdujan (laughing):** Please, please, don’t detail any further – hands by your sides, otherwise we might end up with…
**Mihai Rapcea:** …The little hand that is also used by those from the Rezist movement, a yellow little hand with spread fingers.
I was only a kind of co-participant in this project; I had no contribution whatsoever regarding the management of the project. I even arrived late at the moment when it was displayed there in the courtyard of the Romanian Athenaeum by Eminescu’s statue. However, the event happened there, and someone came and made a salute to the salute that the little hand was addressing to passers-by. The whole thing was filmed and published on the Facebook page “Eminescu, lives through us”; from there the police bodies self-notified. This is the first interesting point.
Two policemen – it doesn’t even matter from which station – the interesting thing is that the policeman ends up self-notifying on acts that require a symbolic interpretation. This is another very important element. Why? Because if the policeman becomes a kind of political-fashion judge, if he assigns value to a gesture in a cultural or, on the contrary, political context – from there the entire problem starts. It is interesting that the prosecutor takes over the logic of the militiaman – because I can no longer call them policemen; they are militiamen. Because they have a kind of narrowness: they “see” and catch the offender. They “see” an offender in someone and put him in the crosshairs. But I asked myself whether those who self-notified were really the policemen or… whether it was a so-called “integrity whistleblower” from the institutional category, such as the Elie Wiesel Institute…
And personally, I tend to believe that behind it is this “institute” Elie Wiesel. For two reasons: a first reason is that they create their own object of work. Because their financing depends on it: reports on antisemitism and other matters, reports on extremism. Because antisemitism in Romania being thin, they feel the need to amplify their object of work. And second, this appetite of this repressive organ called Elie Wiesel – as I call it – to seek out and highlight any manifestation, however interpretable, however small, from which it would result that – God forbid! – there is a shadow of extremism, of xenophobia.
In any case, that was the beginning of the file. Because I was also there, although I do not appear in any filming – I arrived late, practically only when things were being packed up; I was delayed because of the AUR rally that had blocked traffic. Practically I was caught in this file because I had distributed – attention – not the filming that was incriminating, but… the announcement about the event. Because I was also an administrator of the page. I said, to help with visibility, the simple distribution of the announcement was equated by the prosecutor with that kind of participation in the subsequent distribution of the incriminated salute. That is one matter.
The file was disjoined; I found out about the disjoinder because after the three co-authors, so to speak, from the initial file had home searches, they called me and asked me to participate, and the case prosecutor from that file refused my participation in the criminal investigation acts, motivated by the fact that I too… have standing in the file!
**Codruț Burdujan:** Who are these officials you refer to? Why don’t you mention them in your accounts?
**Mihai Rapcea:** Do you know why I avoid giving names? Because the system has no face; you can put anything.
**Codruț Burdujan:** The system nevertheless functions through such elements…
**Mihai Rapcea:** The system functions through some people who are very young. This is what I would like to be underlined: you would not expect young people who live in the spirit of the European Enlightenment, of democracy, of values, to act so abusively and so unconstitutionally. You wouldn’t expect it, would you? It is a shocking matter.
**Codruț Burdujan:** In another context, could they pull the trigger with the conscience that they are doing their duty?
**Mihai Rapcea:** No, the problem is that they do not have this representation of the double standard they apply. On the one hand they claim rights for minorities, for all kinds of causes, they claim broadened freedoms of expression in the public space; ah!, when it comes to principal matters that are aligned with public policies. But when it comes to the same rights that manifest themselves in traditional or historical areas, they suddenly become aggressive, suddenly incompatible with the idea of correctness. They remain politically correct only on the ideas they are set to remain so on – that is my observation.
Unfortunately, with very many newly entered magistrates – I am already a veteran, and those from my generation with 26–27 years of seniority are already pensioners with those very large pensions and have left, they are no longer interested in anything – and these young people who come from behind shock us through the latitude with which they interpret these matters in a tone that has nothing to do with democracy, with procedures… Why do I say this? Because when I found out and understood that okay – so you don’t want to receive me in the file so that I can defend some of them – you consider me incompatible. Although my incompatibility cannot be a professional one as long as I have no standing in your file! And I filed a complaint against those ordinances. That is why I don’t give names, because the respective name was covered by the decision of the chief prosecutor: the prosecutor gave right to the case prosecutor and said: yes, it is perfectly fine that he rejected your mandate and you are not allowed to choose Cutărică… In the second step, when I found out that my part had been disjoined, although the correct solution would have been to move the entire file because, being a unitary offense, so to speak, the file should have been declined to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Appeal. But they were not sure that there they would be served as they initially needed! Here they had caught, so to speak, a “corridor”… that is why people talk a lot about “the corridors of Justice”…
They had caught a corridor of influence, and when the file was disjoined regarding me, I knew about this disjoinder. And I took the steps that any person of good faith takes: I petitioned; I sent a request to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Bucharest Court of Appeal in which I said that I had found out from the papers of the file from which I had been disjoined that legal forms had also been drawn up regarding me, and that I place myself at the disposal of the investigation bodies with any checks. With any documents, anything they consider necessary so that we clarify the matter.
Now, any honest, good-faith prosecutor has the obligation to gather evidence both in favor of and against the accused; the purpose is not incrimination at any cost, but finding the truth in the case. Judicial truth is established on the basis of evidence.
The problem was that they did not want to know my position. That is, I said: “Sir, in order to prevent some elements that would bother me, that would create for me both an image and an emotional prejudice… Should I wake up with masked officers at 6:00 in the morning?… I have a small child” – that is how I wrote all these things. “I ask you to contact me; I too am a legal professional, I have a certain seniority, a certain performance, prestige. Yes, I wish to be treated as such: with the respect due not only to a citizen, but to a participant in the criminal process in very many other files, collegially.” And no, NO collegiality was shown!
I tell you these things because previously, in 2021–2023, I had already been the object of an identical notification regarding – as accusation – antisemitism, xenophobia, supporting public personalities who – God forbid! – are incompatible with the current values of the rule of law. That file was closed; I thought I would receive the same kind of honest treatment from the investigation bodies and that I would be called to give explanations. That did not happen.
I woke up with the masked officers in June; they came, they searched, they committed a lot of abuses… they were interested in the books I had in the house, the icons…
“Where did I get the icon from?”
“Where did I get the icon from?” – that is, absolutely unnatural questions! Besides the object of the respective investigation – for example, I had a small icon of Saint Ioan Lăcătușu with a piece of material from the saint’s garment. That was also raised as an issue! I had two prosecutors at the search together with a great deal of auxiliary personnel, many policemen, many technicians. They searched on the spot, on the carpet; they searched my laptop and telephone – a procedure that is not legal. That is, they stated in their procedural acts that, God forbid, they had carried out a live, direct interception of my messaging. However, this should not have had an impact on the IT environment; that is, no direct access into the system was to be made. This type of surveillance is ordered and carried out through the operator, not through access into the IT system; access is always made only within the framework of the IT search.
They believed that, benefiting from the element of surprise, they would find who-knows-what that I had not managed to delete or do, I don’t know… I let them search. Obviously, they were later sanctioned by the Court of Appeal in the reasoning of the conclusion by which it admitted my challenge. The Court of Appeal judge, a man more normal in the head than the case prosecutor, established that the constitutional limits regarding the administration of evidence nevertheless require respect for the legal procedural norms. That is, you cannot do absolutely anything on the idea that if you have an offense, you will find evidence at any cost. If you do not have this legal symmetry between the accusation and the evidence you want to administer, which you are looking for.
In Swiss law and, in fact, in the law of the European Union, there is a term called “fishing for evidence.” In other words, we issue a search warrant on the idea that we fish for any incriminating evidence; this practice is prohibited by European law! That is, you must keep a symmetry between what you presume was done, the indications you have, and what is found on the spot! So not to search, not to plant, not to invent, not to create evidence for yourself. That is what this is about. And this type of fishing for evidence you will see in very many files.
For example, I am convinced that they had tips, in the sense of suspicions. Information given from the online environment, from my public statements, that for example I like knives or bladed weapons – I repeat, it is an example. Yes, they had come prepared to look for bladed weapons which they would then display like with mafiosi, photograph them and with them portray me as a violent, dangerous person.
**Codruț Burdujan (joking):** I make a parenthesis about the non-violence of the interlocutor – in the context that, before entering attorney Rapcea’s office, it was after rain; he stopped at the door and turned back, picked up an earthworm from the asphalt and threw it into the garden soil where that small being belonged, so that no client would step on it out of carelessness. We return to the subject.
**Mihai Rapcea:** So I had had in the past a live – not only on themes of spirituality, law or politics – in which I was talking, for example, that my father had been an engineer in this special field of materials technology. He knew very many elements about steel and he inspired in me this passion for steels, and I was talking about types and about the way they are forged. I am even a fan of that famous show called “Forged in Fire.” What can I say, they found in a small cupboard a box containing some insulin-type needles and they rejoiced greatly; they thought I was some drug addict. Until we showed them the box of Mounjaro (ed. note: an injectable treatment in the form of a pre-filled pen, approved for weight loss and obesity control, besides its use in type 2 diabetes). Both my wife and I are also trying to lose weight with this treatment, and they were very disappointed…
But before we managed to tell them more, they were already rummaging through the refrigerator and freezer: maybe we are who-knows-what kind of drug addicts…
Absolutely everything was searched! If we had a stack of paper next to the printer, the prosecutor looked through the hundreds of pages in the ream of paper?… So do you understand what the order was? “Come on, let’s catch this guy with something!”
The jackets I had in the hallway were taken like at the airport, centimeter by centimeter, felt. Maybe a legionary badge would be found, a Nazi sign, something that… All the T-shirts were taken out of the wardrobe, one by one. Checked to see if they had insignia. And I told them: “You’re 20 years late. Maybe even more. Maybe in those days when I also wore Metallica, I wore all kinds of symbols; yes, look, now I’m also with Boss, with Armani… But what can I do until these too become illegal? I don’t know who this Hugo Boss was and if in 10 years it won’t mean something else?…”
The perfect form of dictatorship, in which each becomes his own guardian!
**Codruț Burdujan:** In the end we are talking about democracy. And the only way to test democracy is precisely through its excesses; otherwise we could no longer talk about freedoms and liberty. And I remember a discussion I had with a former political prisoner. I do not give the name, because tomorrow I myself might wake up with searches. He was telling me that – regarding the names and those involved in such abuses in the clothing of the state – that all political crimes were committed by people who abused voluntarily. He mentioned then that we should not judge the torturers by the functions they held in the repressive apparatus, but by the measure they exceeded. And now joking: in life, many times we are forced to eat what we do not like, but one thing is to eat with a teaspoon and another with a ladle. It is valid in the case of some officials who, look, trample and crush the lives of many fellow human beings. And we realize, joking bitterly, that absolutely nothing has changed since the time of communism, when if they had the possibility to execute us, they would have executed us because they said, then as now, that they were doing their job. With great zeal…
**Mihai Rapcea:** Here there is also a matter, if you will, of inherited mentality: the system perpetuates itself through personal example. These young people – magistrates, prosecutors, judges – have taken over the habits from the old workers in the system who, in their turn, had taken them over previously from those before them. There was no moment of rupture. Unfortunately, no ideological interruption, no democratic fracture in this perpetuation of some funereal mentalities. On the contrary, I could say that the abuse of power and this, if you will, violent exercise of state authority is the mark of any dictatorial system that hides behind so-called democratic principles. And I would say that this file is perhaps one of the lighter ones, because I did not have the fate of some who swallowed this cup of the bitterness of abuse to the end – for example Cezar Avrămuță, who is still under arrest at this moment.
**Codruț Burdujan:** You have passed to the next question: You benefited from some noise, some media coverage, but there are very many young people who have criminal files… I can say it is something on the order of tens throughout the country. Starting from high-school students up to intellectuals, or maybe hundreds… Look, people who suffer anonymously the abuses of this regime that has instituted the offense of opinion. In our midst something terrible is happening of which we must be aware: if we do not defend freedom, we will bear the consequences of this ignorance or of the weakness we show. I say that, regardless of political opinions – because I have seen very many discussions, limiting myself only to the example of Mihai Rapcea. Even on lawyers’ groups there were pro and contra. I can only bow here before those who, regardless of the opinion of others, do not forget to be colleagues, solitary, intellectuals, educated, human in the face of political crimes, against institutional abuses. It is no longer about subjectivity. All respect to those who have understood that here, in the end, it is about professional dignity, because we are talking, look, about lawyerly arguments, we are talking about civic endeavors, we are not talking about political sympathies. Regardless of whether you are USR or PSD, it is a reality that can execute you at a certain moment – a repressive apparatus of an abusive system. What is happening at this moment with these children taken into the Vexler Law meat-grinder for personal opinions non-conforming with what the current state imposes on them to believe and to speak?
**Mihai Rapcea:** At this moment, through the Vexler Law, but also through the related legislation, the offense of opinion has been incriminated with all the words. The citizen must put a brake on his mouth exactly as he did before, in the time of communism.
**Codruț Burdujan:** So we must be careful what we post, what jokes we make, with whom we speak, how much we speak, on what telephone we speak?
**Mihai Rapcea:** If we make a parallel between the regime of Stalinist communist terror and the current regime, we can say that this type of soft dictatorship has added an extra dose of perversity and complexity to the abuse.
If in those times you were free to think whatever you wanted on condition that you did not speak, because if you spoke you were punished – yet the punishment that came to you was an abusive and illegal punishment because there was no norm that prevented you from speaking. Theoretically, the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the Criminal Code allowed you to say absolutely anything; it was apparent freedom. Yet the communist repressive apparatus acted abusively, openly and illegally; that is, the terror was instituted somehow abusively – but today the terror is open!
In other words, the legislation adopted under the pretext of democratic values is abusive legislation that sanctions opinions and freedom of expression. The citizen is invited to self-censor! It is the most perverse form of abuse. In other words, the Securitate man no longer guards you, no longer listens to you, no longer records you: the one who must guard you is YOU yourself; you become the guardian of your own freedom!
And at the moment when such conduct is imposed on you, they have taken care that the law is sufficiently vague so that you no longer know with exactness what is legal or illegal.
**Codruț Burdujan:** Practically, thus you end up at the mercy of those who control the system in this perfidious way?
**Mihai Rapcea:** And then, so as not to make a mistake, YOU restrain yourself with absolutely everything. That is the perfect form of dictatorship in which each becomes his own guardian. That is, in fact, the meaning of this law. That is why neither the Constitutional Court nor the High Court want to clarify the meaning of the law, do not want to establish some clear limits of interpretation of the legal text… They have left this task to a court of law and this, in general being overloaded with files… will not perform surgery on files or analyze the meaning…
**Codruț Burdujan:** We were illustrating the interview with the large number of young people who have fallen into the trap of these laws that annul freedom of thought and expression, because we who have passed through Ceaușism have this self-censorship in our blood: we know at a certain moment that we must not discuss certain things on the telephone, that we must not discuss in the presence of certain persons whom we suspect of having a “connection” with… or IF we were to discuss like any other people who care what happens around them on the margins of local or global corruption matters, sensitive matters that could be concretely sanctioned by the aberrations instituted. There is nothing new; every age has its gods and its demons.
But look, these young people are taught to taste from… – as we all hoped after ’90, to taste… – freedom in all its forms and colors, according to preferences.
I myself often drew Mihai Rapcea’s attention previously. I felt embarrassed toward him but also toward his wife, not to become very insistent when I was warning him that we do not live in the free reality he believed. I was warning him: you can be hooked by this corrupted system, and I am sorry that my intuition went exactly, because it was sufficient to prove the base quality of the people who hold the levers of today’s decisions, their corruption and corrupting. But he continued with nonchalance to believe that he lives in a world at a distance from the horrors of the past, although the institutions and the descendants of the terrible crimes have changed only their uniforms.
**Mihai Rapcea:** In the face of such a legislative abuse you have two options: The first option is to censor yourself totally and not approach even from afar the subject that is forbidden. And that is in fact the purpose of the law. That is what was adopted.
The second version, the one I have shared, is that of seeking to test the limits of freedom, interpreting through the prism of the common sense of people, of the ordinary man. What is in fact the limit of the law. And to approach subjects in a manner in which you situate yourself outside the criminal sphere.
I considered in approaching this Vexler Law – and I believe this is common sense – that any discussion or statement on the subject of the history of the Jews, of their suffering, of the war in Gaza or any other subject that involves the Jewish people, past or present, are discussable publicly, can be put into public debate as long as there is no express manifestation of incitement to hatred against them. Yes, these are the limits of freedom, as I understand them as a legal professional after 26 years of advocacy.
**Codruț Burdujan:** But look, it does not function in this way…
**Mihai Rapcea:** It does not function in the conception of some. We shall see at the end of the act of justice to whom it will give right, whether my logic was correct or whether, on the contrary, I was wrong and then I shall be punished for my error of valorizing the meaning of the legal text.
A damned „coincidence”…
**Codruț Burdujan:** All these abuses under the flag of anti-discrimination laws manifest themselves, scandalously, precisely in the context in which we are witnessing a state genocide carried out by the Netanyahu government. When, in Europe and not only, one goes so far that pressures are exerted on governments to sanction even criticisms of Israel’s policies, so that these may be associated dialectically and legislatively in the censorship meat-grinder under the stigma of antisemitism. That is, ANY criticisms about Israelis, at a certain moment, might put one into this dark corner.
**Mihai Rapcea:** It was said at a certain moment that antisemitism has become synonymous with anti-Zionism. Zionism is a political movement, it is known, a movement through which the Jews desired to have a homeland and that homeland to be the State of Israel. Up to here, nothing unusual. The problem is that Zionism, as a political doctrine, has numerous anti-human discriminatory accents toward other persons. Zionism, as a political doctrine, was, if I am not mistaken, in 1967 the object of a UN resolution initiated by Russia, by the former Soviet Union, through which it was declared an anti-human doctrine similar to Nazism. Under these conditions, you cannot equate Zionism as a political doctrine with antisemitism, and anyone who criticizes the political actions of Zionism – for example, the incitement to the deportation of populations, the displacement of populations – are acts forbidden by the Universal Charter of Rights. We are witnessing this reality in Gaza. We are witnessing in Gaza the killing of people, the deprivation of the right to water; the right to water is again consecrated by a UN resolution through which any human beings, even animals, have the right to water. All these things show that international law is now shaped according to the interests of certain great powers.
The way these things are reflected in our contemporary space is very important. Why? Because, unfortunately, we do not have these reference elements of public language, of freedom of expression, in which we are told clearly what is acceptable, what is not acceptable in public expression. And then a non-uniform practice is created in which young people who do not have my legal experience in interpreting the law commit involuntarily, through the way they approach certain subjects, the offense of incitement to hatred. Why? I give the example: those who were at the rally against the war in Gaza two weeks ago?
**Codruț Burdujan:** I make a parenthesis here; it seems to me a damned coincidence that these searches against Mihai Rapcea and his family took place shortly after they organized that peace rally in front of the Israeli Embassy in Unirii Square in the capital.
**Mihai Rapcea:** In the prosecutor’s ordinance of putting into motion the criminal action against me it is retained that, by comparing the sufferings of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip with those of those who died in the Holocaust during the Second World War, I commit the “offense of minimization of the Holocaust.” What does that mean: the phrase that I textually said and that appears as the incriminating text in the memorandum I submitted to the Israeli Embassy and in the public speech there at that authorized protest with the Association for the Defense of the Rights of Stateless Persons and Refugees, where I am vice-president – so on a matter of public policies; I did not go as a private person as an exponent of a racist, xenophobic or extremist idea. I have been for 25 years vice-president of this organization and I have protested also at the Russian Embassy, at the Chinese one and everywhere there were abuses directed against the stateless and refugees. I said that the Jewish people – if they commit such abominable acts, the IDF army, Israel Defence Force, if they commit crimes against humanity in Gaza, which are at this moment documented by the International Criminal Court that issues preventive arrest warrants in the names of the main military chiefs – means that they have learned nothing from the suffering of the Second World War and from the suffering of the Holocaust. It was appreciated that this expression represents a “minimization of the suffering of the Jews from that period.”
**Codruț Burdujan:** I return to the question: do these officials who allow themselves to be sucked into such abuses merely do their duty or… are we already talking about something much more horrifying?
**Mihai Rapcea:** They took over this expression of “minimization of the suffering from the Holocaust” from the report of the Elie Wiesel Institute. Those who set the tone and framed legally, if you will, my expression giving it the criminal connotation were those from Elie Wiesel. That is why I say that those who actually made the notification and who are behind this criminal file are those from Elie Wiesel.
**Codruț Burdujan:** And I go further with the question: are we not talking about a risk to national security, because it is about very many citizens who, look, are persecuted through the prism of some opinions? And further, “are we allowed” to speak also about influence over our own sovereign decisions regarding foreign policy? If such pressures and interventions position us also at the highest level and push us tomorrow into war with states from outside the continent, and we witness the way our airports, our bases are placed at the disposal of parties in the conflict without those who are voted and delegated to defend Romania ensuring, without claiming any shield, any security and guarantee regarding the life and integrity of the citizens? When the great Western states refuse interference and the support of the genocide in Gaza, here are there not risks that we are exposed to decisions that do not represent us? If simple matters of citizen opinions are treated in a military manner, as in time of war, but when interests of global powers would be targeted, what democratic or security levers remain to us? Will it not then be too late to ask ourselves whether silence in time of peace can cost us everything in the case of a war that does not belong to us? Can a loss of freedoms not attract catastrophic consequences if it is ignored?
**Mihai Rapcea:** Here we are talking about a philosophy of national law, about a philosophy that should have stood behind the concept of public policies that Romania does not have. Unfortunately, we do not have, if you will, some red lines; we do not have a national strategy at governmental or political level. Regarding the sensitive relation with certain states that are at this moment in conflict, I allow myself to recall that Romania had such strategies and had such clear directions before ’89, when the leader of the state at that moment allowed himself to create a political agenda different from that of the communist bloc. He erected himself as a promoter of peace and of an understanding between Palestinians and Israelis. So there existed, if you will, a firm positioning of the Romanian state on this theme. Today we have no public expression or positioning whatsoever: all that Romanian politicians do are concessions.
**Codruț Burdujan:** We have sat today, look, more about the executants and less about the politicians? Because if we take each role separately we talk about other definitions; I do not know how many remain politicians and how many are in reality only some individuals sent to stamp and then sent to the station without goodbye, without discerning the consequences…
Portrayal as an antisemite: …“it seems I punched a hole of 18 million euros in them”
**Mihai Rapcea:** I would like to speak a little about this institute, which is an institute subordinated to the Government of Romania. It was established by government decision. Probably at the request of our strategic partners, it is financed from Romania’s money.
At this moment it figures in the PNRR in the financing agenda from the European Union with a separate financing chapter for the Museum of the History of the Jews in Romania.
They received a building on Calea Victoriei worth many millions of euros, which for years they have been dilly-dallying to arrange. They tried, in 2015, to take over illegally a building from the old center of the capital. It is about the Dacia Palace.
The Dacia Palace has an interesting history; it is a historic palace of the Bucharesters, emblematic, situated on Calea Lipscani, right behind the National Bank; it is on the ground floor and two more levels, 4,000 square meters of exhibition space. As I was saying, an emblematic building that was bought in 2011, if I am not mistaken, by the Capital City Hall for the purpose of rehabilitation and transformation into a museum of modern art, as all Western countries, all European countries have a great museum in the historic center. It was bought with 12 million euros from BCR by the Capital City Hall and another six million euros were invested in it. But at the moment when it was ready, turnkey, the Ambassador of the United States in Romania, Mark Gitenstein, appears in 2015 at a session of the Capital City Council, together with a representative of the Elie Wiesel Institute, and they ask that the building be given to them. They expected everyone to fall on their knees. To their surprise, the USR of Nicușor Dan and a good part of the PNL who did not understand what it was about refused the request and gave a negative vote; the session was suspended.
The telephones rang: Mrs. Firea receives a telephone, Mr. Nicușor receives a telephone, the vote is resumed and this time the project passes with unanimous votes. At that moment we were notified by a good part of the art critics and of the persons involved in the artistic environment that the project is being stolen from them. Because the project was supposed to begin; there are over 20,000 works collected from Bucharesters, old families who donated them to the Municipality of Bucharest for exhibition; they are valuable works of art, yes, very valuable works that were supposed to be exhibited. Unique works! And the project was being stolen from them – a project of 18 million euros.
At that moment I, together with another citizen, formulated a complaint against this decision of the General Council of the Capital at the Bucharest Tribunal. The Bucharest Tribunal admitted our contestation on two grounds. The first ground: the project had not been put into the debate procedure of the transparency of the decisional transparency law. It had to remain at least 20 days on the city hall’s website. Citizens were to express their position regarding the opportunity of such a donation, practically of the use for an undetermined term to the Elie Wiesel Institute; so a law was violated in this sense.
And in the second place, the opinions of the specialized commissions that were supposed to analyze the opportunity had not been given – whether the respective ones had a project, whether the respective project is suitable for 4,000 square meters of exhibition space; under the conditions that, attention, Elie Wiesel, while he was alive, participated together with the Tismăneanu Commission in the so-called Tismăneanu Report in the Romanian Parliament. That report decided / and was agreed by the international institutions and by Mr. Elie Wiesel that within the national history museums special sections regarding the history of the Jews in Romania would be made. In other words, they would form an integral part of the national history. As was natural, yes? In the meantime Elie Wiesel died and the leadership of the Institute was taken over by a citizen who it seems did not even have the necessary qualifications. He was not a historian and so on… Mr. Alexandru Florian. And we woke up with this initiative of theirs, but in what manner: that before we reached court with the annulment of the decision of the Local Council, of the General Council of the Capital, Mr. Gitenstein with the representatives from Elie Wiesel went to the guard of this building, of the Dacia Palace, took the keys from him and were already making plans where to make cafés, how to divide the spaces.
You understand that we formulated a criminal complaint against these people at the DNA for influence trafficking. It is not admissible that a high-ranking dignitary, of the rank of ambassador in Romania, comes and exerts pressures for personal economic interests. That is what Mr. Gitenstein, the AMBASSADOR of the United States in Bucharest, did…: the DNA file has not been solved to this day. Apropos of justice with two speeds: the files of the nationalists go at full speed to court, while those of the great corruption remain there. The result of this story was that they did not even make an appeal any longer, they did not insist on this matter, they left it dead. However, who appears on television and says that attorney Mihai Rapcea is an antisemite? Mr. Florian!?… Why? Because I opposed this institutional abuse which, practically, the court sanctioned!
Thus I appeared as a portrayal of an antisemite. And from that moment I began to appear in all the Elie Wiesel reports. I want it to be known the true reason why I appear in this report: it seems I punched a hole of 18 million euros in them.
**Codruț Burdujan:** These are matters that most people do not know; they believed it was only about some lives, like that… on Facebook. A subject that awaits an official response from the competent services of the state but also from all those mentioned by Mihai Rapcea, because it is their turn this time to prove transparency, non-discriminations and legality. In their absence, silence could confirm a criminal corruption at the top of the state that manipulates Justice, the institutions and goes as far as the effective destruction of those who try to (still) open their mouths.
As I was saying, this subject is much more tenebrous and all that was missing would be a crisis at the level of national security at the moment when we have a war at the border and a corruption that decides when and who opens the door of our house.
How did it affect you professionally, Mr. Attorney? Because, in the family, I am convinced, I do not want to ask you further, you lived a true terror. You imagined that you had to do with a corrupt and abusive society but not so much that they would rummage through your clothes or keep you under arrest for nights.
**Mihai Rapcea:** Yes, it happened that on that day the child was at my mother’s and thus was not directly affected by the whole action of the policemen and the gendarmes.
We were only I and my wife at home; however, what I want to say is that it did indeed affect us professionally. We have Jewish clients: at the moment when your computer is taken for scrutiny, at the moment when confidential data are copied, are placed at the disposal of investigation bodies that seek absolutely anything, those people – people who do not like either their private businesses or their stories from justice to be exposed – obviously took a step back and I lost the clientele even from the area of the Jewish citizens whom I was assisting and representing in various cases. That is a first matter. In the second place, obviously the portrayal as the antisemite on duty, the extremist on duty in that context was not accidental. The moment chosen was exactly three days before the visit to Romania of the president of the State of Israel, who went to Sighet, as you know, and there made broad appreciations on the margin of the necessity of a harder application in Romania of the Vexler Law and of obtaining results of convictions by the investigation bodies. In other words, a ball was lifted to the net, and he made indirect references to my case. That showed, also from my point of view, the fact that they needed a big case, they needed a media exposure to match and they hoped they would find more than they had in the initial briefings, something that did not happen. If, at the first hour, at the moment when I was detained and taken to the investigation, there was talk about extreme actions, about an extremist person and an image of a violent person was created for me, toward evening, at the moment when I was detained, the televisions had already calmed down because they no longer received the material that was promised, that was to come from judicial sources.
You have observed in other famous cases, for example the Georgescu case, how information with quotes, with extremely concrete information from the investigation was leaked, a thing obviously not permitted. But no one bothers any longer to ask whether it is correct, whether it was legal to expose them media-wise with confidential information from the investigation? Similarly, they would probably have proceeded also in my case if they had found relevant things. That shows a great deal about the manner in which the so-called press collaborates with this justice.
**Codruț Burdujan:** I hope that, as long as we still have the illusion of democracy, we can still discuss freely. If you did not know, before becoming a lawyer, Mihai Rapcea had the intention of taking the entrance exam for medicine; he has a very vast medical culture, for which reason I ask him for a diagnosis of the current justice. What would that be approximately?…
**Mihai Rapcea:** You know what the matter is: Justice is nothing but an expression, a symptom of the general state of society. We cannot speak of it distinctly, separately from the rest of the political class or the way in which the Romanian people and our economy exist; as a symptom of the political class and of our governance, justice shows that Romania is on the edge of an abyss.
**Codruț Burdujan (ironically):** If it is on the edge of the abyss it means we are still standing well. Many would say that we are already in freefall…
**Mihai Rapcea:** It is at a turning point of history. At the moment when the state begins to make gestures through which it sanctions citizens openly for themes that are constitutional, it is clear that at that moment we have an ideological fracture between the people and the ruling class. This type of separations, of fractures, are produced and deepen; they are not healed except through democracy. And that shows that there exists a power struggle between the ruling class of Romania, this class, if you will parallel state, and the Romanian people. And I believe that the Romanian people will win, because the clock of history cannot be turned back.
**Codruț Burdujan:** Are we talking about the risks of a radicalization at the level of society? Because this division goes hand in hand also with very strong propaganda. Regardless of what subject we discuss, we see that Romanians are divided and this is a method of control.
**Mihai Rapcea:** The idea is that those who lead the Romanian state at this moment have also thought of this variant. Recently, Law 61/91 regarding some antisocial acts was modified in the month of June; it was also published in the Official Gazette and entered into force; thus if, for example, you are sanctioned twice for the same act, within 72 hours you risk fines of up to 10,000 RON plus days of community service work, and these days of work, attention, if they are not performed, transform into days of imprisonment. So our governors have found a modality through which to put the lid on, to cover the pot in case of… God forbid!
**Codruț Burdujan:** We have greatly exceeded the time we had projected to frame this interview; I want to finish with two very important aspects: many of those who followed your LIVEs ask where they can still follow you, where they can still find information, materials published by Mihai Rapcea?
**Mihai Rapcea:** I have created a new Mihai Rapcea page on Facebook; there I still publish a part of the LIVEs that I make in the Facebook group Poiana lui Rapcea; a part of these are still taken over by the YouTube channel AntiSistem, where someone takes them over and reposts them; a part of them I still put on the TikTok channel and that’s about it…
**Codruț Burdujan:** Vis-à-vis the Facebook group Poiana lui Rapcea, the one who created it, G. Donțu – I spoke with him online – and he confessed to me that he withdrew because he was afraid that very many provocateurs had also entered there. With all this, have you continued to assume the same free speech without any kind of intimidations?
**Mihai Rapcea:** No. I want it to be understood that in a group each posts what he wants, however each is responsible for his personal posts; the group, as context, rather shows the way in which people perceive me and how they would rather wish me to be.
**Codruț Burdujan:** Let us also speak about the evolution of this file; what do you expect to follow?
**Mihai Rapcea:** I still await that justice will heal itself at a certain moment, that there will exist also regarding me at least a glimmer of normality. I say this because I will be judged by judges who have known me for very many years and who understand my way of thinking for very many years and who also follow my lives. And, in this context, I have confidence in justice. I could not say the same thing for those who are accused in other files, who are private particular persons, who are not correctly characterized, do not have a public image similar to mine in which they can oppose the accusations with a normal defense from this point of view. On the other hand, I hope that the future composition of the Romanian Parliament will be of a nature to censor this type of legislative abuses and to sanction this Vexler Law, so that it will be, at least, if not abrogated, at least modified, so that it establishes clear criteria of interpretation.
34 cititori.
