Chief of Defense Staff, criminally prosecuted by DNA for favoring children of generals

General Gheorghiţă Vlad, Chief of Defense Staff, was indicted yesterday by military prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate in a case that concerns alleged interventions aimed at favoring the access of individuals close to the higher military environment to state-funded studies and, subsequently, to a career in the structures of the Ministry of National Defense.

According to the press release issued by the DNA, the evidence administered so far shows that, during July 2025, the Chief of the Defense Staff "through his acts of complicity, facilitated the issuance and signing by Lieutenant General Berdilă Iulian, the Deputy for Operations and Training of the Chief of the Defense Staff, of a request addressed to the Ministry of Education and Research, regarding the supplement of places from the budget for the National University of Physical Education and Sport Bucharest - Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, exceeding the limits of the attributions conferred by the legislation". The DNA claims that the respective request did not fall within the attributions of the Defense Staff, but represented "the exclusive attribute of the General Directorate of Human Resources Management, a central structure within the MApN". However, the document was allegedly transmitted to the Ministry of Education and would have produced concrete effects. Prosecutors state that "the official document issued under the conditions described above would have determined the decision to supplement with 20 budget places, by promoting the candidates initially admitted to the places with a fee, to the supplemented budget places".

The stake would not have been only the saving of university fees by those who benefited from this decision. According to the DNA, the effects would have extended even to the future professional prospects of some candidates. The prosecutors' statement states that "through this method, the legitimate interests of the Ministry of National Defense would have been harmed, by affecting institutional relations, and, correlatively, an undue benefit would have been created for the benefit of the 20 candidates, by promoting them, from the places with a fee, to the supplemented budget places, following that upon completion of their university studies, a number of 3 candidates would be hired as officers at the Ministry of National Defense".

The scale of the scandal, however, seems to be broader than that presented in the official statement. According to information published in the public domain and cited by G4Media, the investigation is said to be aimed at favoring two daughters of senior officers. One of them is the daughter of General Mihai Şomordolea, former secretary of the Supreme Council of National Defense, and the other is the daughter of General Anicescu, a military doctor. The cited sources claim that the interventions investigated by the prosecutors were aimed at both access to free education and facilitating subsequent professional advantages in the military system.

In the respective file, the investigators are also checking procedures related to employment competitions in the Army, which suggests that the investigation could have a broader scope than the episode of supplementing budget positions.

The case is all the more sensitive as Vlad Gheorghiţă holds the highest military position in Romania. Appointed to the position of Chief of the Defence Staff on 30 November 2023, the general has a career spanning over three decades in the Romanian Army, being a veteran of the Iraq theatre of operations and holder of important military distinctions, including the National Order of the Star of Romania in the rank of Knight and the National Order of Military Virtue in the rank of Knight. That is precisely why the DNA investigation has a major impact both at the institutional level and in terms of the Army's public image.

However, prosecutors emphasize that the indictment represents only a procedural stage of the criminal process and does not amount to establishing guilt. "The further conduct of the criminal prosecution is a stage of the criminal process regulated by the Code of Criminal Procedure, with the aim of establishing the procedural framework for the administration of evidence, an activity that cannot, under any circumstances, defeat the principle of the presumption of innocence," the DNA says.

However, the simple fact that the Chief of the Defense Staff is a suspect in an investigation targeting alleged favoritism for the benefit of the children of some generals transforms the file into one of the most sensitive and important cases of corruption and abuse of office that have reached the leadership of the Romanian Army in recent years.