ROMANIANS had assumed that Elena Udrea, a former tourism minister, was too powerful for prosecutors to touch. The ex-wife of a rich businessman, she is a protégée of Traian Basescu, a former president. Yet the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) has arrested her for helping to launder millions of dollars her former husband made from charging the government inflated prices for software. Her prosecution is a boost for the DNA, which is slowly convincing observers of progress in tackling corruption.
The DNA’s chief prosecutor, Laura Codruta Kovesi, a basketball star in her teens, rose through the magistracy before getting the top job in April 2013. Some feared she would be unable to protect the agency’s reputation, but in fact the pace of high-level cases has increased. In 2014 the DNA secured convictions of 1,138 people, including 24 mayors, five members of parliament, two ex-ministers and a former prime minister, Adrian Nastase. More than 90% of its indictments led to convictions.
Such good deeds have not gone unpunished. Last year, Ms Kovesi says, “every evening on television, there were attacks on my personal life.” A TV station owned by an oligarch accused her of taking bribes. (She sued for libel.) The DNA faced interference by Victor Ponta, Romania’s prime minister, who before his election in 2012 called it a successor to the reviled…
