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The Ministry of National Defense seems to have become, in recent years, a magnet for corruption temptations surrounding military procurement, a minefield where huge sums, geopolitical pressure and the fever of emergency contracts have created an ecosystem in which buying influence, political arrangements and dubious "urgent" deals tend to become routine.
The most recent example is the "Bribery at the Ministry of National Defense" case, in which former senator Marius Ovidiu Isăilă was detained by the DNA and placed in preventive detention for 30 days, after allegedly promising one million euros "for the minister" to "push" certain contracts to Romtehnica to a private company in Bulgaria. In the intercepts made by anti-corruption prosecutors, the language is brutal and says everything about how the institution is viewed: "In the bag, so we don't have any traces!", "When the contract was signed... you have a million... in the bag. I'll bring it to you!", "Everyone wins!", and the political promise comes with the package: "...we help him in the campaign." The whistleblower in the case is Octavian Berceanu, the former head of the Environmental Guard, who publicly confirmed that he collaborated with investigators; Minister Ionuţ Moşteanu said that he refused any meeting with the corruptor and that he supports the investigation, a context in which the DNA officially specified the accusations regarding the buying of influence in connection with C.N. Romtehnica S.A., a company with the sole shareholder MApN. The facts are in their early stages and the defendant benefits from the presumption of innocence, but the mechanism described - a million "in the bag" to "move" the signing - shows how low the conversation about public money has reached in the area of national defense.
This culture of "pushing" contracts does not appear in a vacuum. The period between 2018-2023 was marked by resounding failures and suspicions around strategic programs. The corvette file - over 1 billion euros - remains a textbook case: after years of disputes, appeals and accusations, the Ministry of Defense canceled the tender in 2023, although the Naval Group - Constanţa Naval Shipyard association had been designated the winner in 2019. A strategic fiasco that pulverized credibility and left the Navy stranded just when the security environment was worsening.
The BURSA newspaper showed at the time that the tender had been politically and administratively contaminated since 2017-2018, especially regarding the award criteria that were "adjusted" by GD 48/2018, after pressure and bilateral discussions with the French side, aspects that generated complaints and notifications to the prosecutor's offices in 2019. Even though the respective files were closed (all of them resulted in the non-initiation of criminal prosecution), the institutional disaster remains: lost years, ruined reputation and zero corvettes delivered.
The military truck industry was not spared from the noise either. While the framework agreement for thousands of trucks was presented as an example of modernization and the Iveco factory in Petreşti, as the best example, representatives of employees in the national defense industry criticized the fact that the Italian company chose to invest in a greenfield investment when it had a 20,000 square meter hall at its disposal inside the Automecanica Moreni Plant, and accused the Italians of being politically influenced by leaders of the PNL and Pro România.
In the chapter "how to waste a decade", the IAR-99 "Super/SM Şoim" episode is defining. The BURSA newspaper reported in 2019 on the resignation of Dragoş-George Sandu, the general manager of Avioane Craiova, the background of the scandal of the selection of the avionics supplier - the company CMC Electronics, a company that in the period 2009-2012 received Mr. Sandu for free at a specialization course. In the scandal of 2019, regarding the modernization of the IAR 99 aircraft - on which Romanian pilots were to train to handle F16 aircraft, the general manager of Avioane Craiova was accused of circumventing the procedure by submitting the offer of the company CMC Electronics by e-mail, raising suspicions of a conflict of interest. The Ministry of Economy then urgently requested clarification of the situation.
In the light of the above, we are practically witnessing a financial reality that fuels temptations: billions of euros pumped into a short time horizon, from air and land programs to air defense and ammunition, with many accelerated procedures. Where money flows, "fireflies” also light up: press investigations have shown how major procurement levers have been moved or politically "coordinated” under the umbrella of framework programs, while society only sees the headline with the total amount, and the details are lost among confidential clauses, unclear offsets and exceptions to the usual procurement rules. An ideal environment for commission hunters, "open-door” intermediaries and networks that promise to "make moves" in 24 hours contracts and amounts, which would otherwise take months or maybe years.
In this article we did not set out to demonize the need for rearmament. It is vital in the current geostrategic conditions. The text above is basically a warning about the fact that the MApN has become, in perception and unfortunately too often in practice, an institution with an extremely high risk of corruption of the decision-making chain. The Isăilă file, the interceptions with "a million in the bag", the corvettes buried after four years of quarrel and cancellations, the IAR-99 SM draw the same map of vulnerabilities: too much money, too much opacity, too many "exceptions to the rule" and too many intermediaries who offer to "help". The way out of the trap is not done with nervous communiques, but with simple and applied rules: real contractual transparency (up to the limit of military secrecy, but not beyond), traceability for each "urgency", independent external audit on major programs, rotation of teams in the General Directorate of Armaments, conflict of interest treated as an operational and criminal risk, and real protection for whistleblowers. Otherwise, "in the bag" remains the "efficient" option in a state that buys expensively, delivers late and discovers too late that influence has already been bought.
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