Ex. unic Nr. 53/SIIEA/MDOC/01.05.

2015

SISTEM INFORMATIC INTEGRAT E-ADMINISTRAIE

Disguised electoral bribery

--intermediate/partial result--

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 FORMS OF
ELECTORAL BRIBERY

HYBRID THREATS TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY:

THE SETTLEMENT OF FISCAL RECEIVABLES BY PRESCRIPTION;

THE IMPACT OF CIRCUMVENTING REGULATIONS, REGARDING THE COLLECTION OF
FISCAL RECEIVABLES OWED TO THE LOCAL BUDGETS, ON THE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT.

The SISTEM INFORMATIC INTEGRAT E-ADMINISTRAIE (The INTEGRATED INFORMATIC SYSTEM

E-ADMINISTRATION), organized structure under art. 3 paragraphs. 2 and par. 3 Civil Code and the
Law 31/1990, headquartered in Trgu-Jiu, Siretului 3 street, Gorj county, Romania, CIF 31068669,
e-mail address registratura@somatie.ro, conducts nationwide the project on the aggregation of data
regarding the administration in legal conditions of public budgets and the degree of administrative
efficiency of the local public authorities concerning the collection and suiveillance of incomes owed
to the local budgets, integral part of the general consolidated state budget.

In this regard, The INTEGRATED INFORMATIC SYSTEM E-ADMINISTRATION, collects, through its
agents, the necessary information for the OBSERVATION OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITY OF
TERRITORIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS (OACTAD).
The aim of OACTAD is to create conditions in order:
- To correlate the data made public by TERRITORIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS (TAD)
with the data directly collected from the territory, aiming to establish the exact level of the
administrative capacity of TAD, the degree of tax, local taxes and fines collection, as well as to
directly establish the degree of self-financing of TAD;
- To obtain the exact, correct and detailed information, in accordance with the records preserved
nationwide, correlated and completed with information and data that could not be entered into
the official reporting documents (specific details for each TAD which, in the standard reporting
form, were not entered in official documents because they were not requested or they were
omitted).

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 LEGAL PROVISIONS REGARDING THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE TERRITORIAL AND
ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS (TAD)
Article 291 fiscal code
The local public administration authorities and their special bodies are responsible, by case, for
establishing, controlling and collecting local taxes, as well as fines and penalties related to those
taxes.
Article 8 of Law 273/2006 on local public finances: The Principles of Transparency and Publicity
The budgeting process is opened and transparent, being made through:
a) Publication of the local budgetary project and its annual execution report in the local press, on
the web page of the public institution, or by posting it at the headquarters of the local public
administration authority;
Article 76 ind. 1 of Law 273/2006 assigns to TAD the obligation to communicate, of its own motion,
the following information:
a) The budgetary projects referred to in art. 1 (2) subject to public consultation, including their
appendices, within and no later than 2 working days from making them subject to public
consultation;
b) The communications provided for in art. 57 (2^1), within and no later than 5 working days from
reception;
c) The approved budgets provided for in art. 1(2), including their appendices, within and no later
than 5 working days from the approval;
d) The financial statements on the quarter and annual budget execution for the budgets provided
for in art. 1(2), including outstanding payments, within and no later than 5 working days after
their submission to the general directorates of the public finances;
e) The general consolidated budget of the territorial and administrative division/subdivision,
drawn-up according to the methodology approved by joint order of the Minister of
Administration and Internal Affairs and the Minister of Public Finances, within and no later than
5 working days after its presentation to the city council;
f) The register of local public debt, as well as the register of local guarantees, annually updated,
until the 31st of January of each year;
g) The programme of public investments of the territorial and administrative division/subdivision
within and no later than 5 working days from the approval.
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 COLLECTION OF FISCAL RECEIVABLES, ROLE AND THE PLACE OF THE FISCAL RECEIVABLES
WITHIN THE STATES PROPER FUNCTIONING

The collection of fiscal receivables owed to the local budgets represent a priority within the
budget execution, consisting in obtaining revenues within the established time period and amount and
making expenditures according to the foreseen destination.
The realization of the revenues in the foreseen amount represents a binding statutory, as revenues
greater than those established are of interest within the budget execution, besides the necessity to
achieve the established level. In the same time, making expenditures, according to the foreseen
destination and as approved in the general consolidated budget, also represents a legal obligation.
Both stages are of crucial importance, because only their simultaneous transposing to practice can, by
nature, insure the funding of activities, the public institutions proper functioning and the avoidance of a
financial crisis situation or insolvency.
The increase of the recovery activity of fiscal receivables due to the local budgets is necessary, as it has
a special importance in co-financing priority projects, intended to insure the balanced development of
Romania.
The Minister of Finance, through his specialized structures, organizes and conducts nationwide,
continuous and sustained activities to assure the necessary minimum at the level of the collection of tax
receivables. The pressure of the budgetary expenditure with an ascendant curve, and the amount of the
necessary amounts for the states proper functioning without descendant development curves makes
the Minister of Finance to constantly look for new revenue sources in order to balance the state budget
and, in the same time, to produce the methodological and legal framework for insuring the collection of
taxes.
However, there are actors local public institutions which not only do not understand the
overwhelming importance of the collection on time and in the established amount of the tax
receivables, but even organize and conduct constantly and continuously activities aiming at
stopping or encumbering the activity of collection of fiscal receivables, without any regard to
their nature taxes, fines etc.
The consequences are serious and very serious:
- the lack of collection of the owed amounts to the state budget;

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- the creation of favourable conditions to defy legal provisions, the decrease of the states
authority through the effect of public perception, of the ineffectiveness of sanctions
imposed as fines (the absence of repercussions authors note: of punishment for the
antisocial committed act);
- the significant decrease of voluntary compliance due to the passivity of local fiscal bodies;
- in the absence of implementation of legal measures, including sanctions with coercive
effect and in the conditions of subornation to the non-compliance with the legal
provisions, the taxpayers both natural and legal people along with the representatives
of involved public institutions affect the Romanian citizens safety and the states
security.
As a result of the actions conducted by our division, we have identified such behaviours at the level
of TAD of common rank, being also possible the identification at the level of TAD of superior rank,
therefore, our division will take actions after the completion of the aggregation of data obtained at a
common level/rank (issues covered by the Strategy of national security of Romania where the
state institutions ineffective reactions before the escalation of the economic criminality phenomena
and the intensification of corruption were identified as vulnerabilities in the internal situation of the
country, with an impact on the national security. Also, frauds in the emphasize and collection of
taxes to the budget, the allocation of deferrals to the payments due to the state without guarantees
and control have been specified as being economic risks that might affect the national security).
The increasing process of globalization and interdependence among the worlds states economies
led to the formation of threats to the national security, as well as to new courses of action of some
old threats.
The competent state institutions are constantly involved in activities which target the
cognition, prevention, fighting and/or restriction of the negative effect of all threats to the
national security and, implicitly, to the security of citizens either economic, political or of
any other type.
A particular emphasis is given to the threats coming from the outside, with the loss of the
overwhelming importance of internal threats cognition.
There is even the risk of capping or mechanising the cognition, prevention and fighting
approaches regarding the internal threats in so far as the emphasis is put on those from the
outside, and the internal ones may suffer chameleonic mutations in order to pass the filter of the
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state bodies with competences in this matter or in order to create situations where the behaviour in
time and space might involve the need for synergistic, solidary and simultaneous counteraction
from several state institutions, and in the cases where there is the possibility for these state
institutions to co-operate only formally, restrictively and thus ineffectively, the premises of reaching
the deepest point of potentially dangerous situations to national security are created.
Among the several asymmetrical types of threats, a strong impact on the states economy, in
comparison with the used resources for planning and executing the attack, are those associated
with the non-collection of the amounts to the consolidated state budget or to the local
budgets.
Although the main risk factors to the economic security have been identified and comprehensively
analysed, being easily enumerated at the moment:
- the development of the underground economy;
- the persistence of economic, financial and social problems, caused by the extension of the
transition and the delay of the structural reforms;
- the emphasis of corruption and unprofitable administration of public resources phenomena,
especially at a local level;
- the reactions, occasionally ineffective, of the state institutions before the increasing
phenomena of economic crime, public order and public security perturbation;
- the maintenance of some sources and causes of potential social precise conflicts, with effects
on the decrease or interruption of economic processes and activities;
- the non-compliance with the ecological guidelines in the running of some industrial
objectives;
- the possibility of ecological and natural disasters and processes of environmental
degradation;
- the diminution of the level of trust that citizens have in the state institutions, resulting from
the excessive indolence and bureaucracy in the administration;
- the maintenance at a low level of the informational infrastructure and delays in its
development at the standards imposed by the dynamics of globalisation;
- the specialists immigration from different cutting-edge fields, phenomenon that affects the
development potential of the society,

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the synergistic effect with major negative implications resulted from the combination of some of
these local risk factors, is neglected and, most of the times, ignored.
At the level of the territorial and administrative divisions, the unprofitable administration of
public resources, combined with the excessive bureaucracy, the absence of financial resources,
whereas the absence of trained professionals who face the complexity of the fiscal legislation and the
maintenance at a low level of the informational infrastructure are severely felt, generate complex and
highly important social and economic phenomena which, through social destructive effects, are
assimilated by the hybrid threats to the national security.

If in the case of tax evasion, the actors are mostly coming from the private environment, when it comes
to the refusal of collecting the amounts to the state budget or to the local budget, the active
factors are found in the civil officers, who are state representatives.

Depending on the place of emergence, intensity and used methods, the fraud can take the following
forms: tax evasion, contraband, fraud, but also undetectable or speculative forms, specific
interpretations of some legal provisions in order to avoid taxation or simply the refusal of the
empowered state body to function legally ISSUES DESIGNED TO COMPLETELY AVOID THE
POSSIBLE ASSESSMENT AND QUANTIFICATION AS THEY ARE NOT ACHIEVED IN COMPLIANCE
WITH THE LEGISLATION.

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 DETAILS CONCERNING THE POSSIBLE EMPLOYMENT OF SOME ACTIVITIES CONDUCTED AT THE
LEVEL OF TAD FROM ROMANIA IN THE CATEGORY OF ASYMMETRICAL THREATS TO THE
NATIONAL SECURITY:

ELECTORAL BRIBERY
COVERED BY THE NON-COLLECTION OF AMOUNTS OWED TO THE TADC
ACTIVITIES THAT MIGHT BE CONSIDERED AS ASYMMETRICAL THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY

In practice, we often encounter cases where taxpayers with small revenues are rigorously taxed, while
the possessors of multiple significant revenues benefit from circumstances which, at the end, lead to an
administrative fiscal conduct that is contrary to the fundamental principles of equality between the
citizens and tax non-discrimination.
Also, the taxation according to the law of only certain categories of taxpayers by imposing, surveying
and collecting obligations to the state budget only from these categories, is contrary to the principles of
fiscal equity.
Our analysis reveals the fact that in the urban environment, the local tax authorities conduct to a
greater extent the implementation of legal guidelines concerning the collection of fiscal receivables.
This conduct does necessarily come from different interests of the urban environment authorities
compared to those of the rural environment, but it is limited more by the pressure of the central
administration and active members of the civil society, mostly stuck in the urban environment.

THE MAYOR 1 OF TADC/ AUTHORISING OFFICER OF THE LOCAL BUDGET the factual source and
the possible guilty-by-default for:
- the unbalance in the self-financing activity of TAD
- GENERATOR OF THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY
In the rural environment, the mayor is not only the authorising officer of the local budget, but also the
competent authority to organize, supervise and conduct collection activities of the debts to the budget.
In the same time, in most of the cases, the pressure of the central authority surveillance is missing the
local autonomy being well-implemented from this point of view.

1
SEE ANNEX 1
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Because the rural communities are smaller, the pressure and the control of civil society, related to the
surveillance of the way in which the mayor and the local council manage the budget, are also missing.
Basically, the mayor is the one who decides often without any regard to the legal provisions on
what, how, where and how big is the interest for the activities that imply the local budget and are
eventually necessary for the municipality.
In practice, it has been found that the TADC mayor has at his disposal the local budget, in a small
margin of error. This privileged position is, of course, necessary to be kept for as long as possible.

In Romania, the elections within the authorities of the local public administration are governed by Law
67/2004. And under art. 1(4): The mayors of the municipalities are elected on electoral districts,
by uninominal ballot. Basically, the citizens with the right to vote choose, according to internal
creeds, a citizen residing in the locality in order to be mayor and to exercise the tasks set out in
Law 215/2001. Among the candidates for the public function of mayor wins the one that has the
biggest number of non-cancelled votes.

Most of the citizens from the rural environment are stuck especially in attaining the factual
immediate needs. High-sounding discourses, demagogic promises, presentation of some management
projects that involve and call for superior cognitive functions and knowledge that requires complex
levels of skills achieved through higher education, have low chances to draw their attention, fact that
resulted from the experience of passed elections in Romania. We anecdotally mention Adrian Mladins
known case, the mayor of Jilava municipality, who won the elections with a percentage of 60% of the
votes, although he was in remand custody being accused of corruption and abuse of office.

The mayors of TADC are elected mostly among the candidates who managed to personally
and/or financially excite the citizens of the municipality.

The state of things at the level of most of the municipalities in Romania:

- At the moment, Romania is, still and to a significant extent, a rural Romania, 93.7% of the
territory of Romania is a rural territory, and approximately 44% of the Romanians live in
the rural environment;
- 40% of the people work in the rural environment;
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 - The participation of the agriculture at the constitution of the GDP is up to 15%;
- The economic activities in the rural environment are not varying very much being most
connected to trade, constructions and, in an overwhelming majority, to planning and
agricultural or agriculture-related activities;
- a continuous pauperization of the population from the rural environment might be
noticed simultaneously with the development of the self-subsistence farming;
- The absence of the financial means among most of the citizens of municipalities is severely
felt;
- The payment of the debts to the local budget is made almost exclusively in cash, the degree
of banking being reduced;

INFLUENCES UPON THE RESULT OF THE ELECTIONS IN THE RURAL ENVIRONMENT. WHO HAS
THE DECISIONAL POWER? MAKING THE SELECTOR DEPENDENT WITH THE HELP OF THE LOCAL
BUDGETARY REVENUES

In Romania, the mayors election is made in one tour of ballot. The municipalities from Romania have
on average 3,700 inhabitants. Among these, 23% are over 60 years old (in comparison with 16% from
the urban environment), and 25% are under 18 years old. The natural growth is negative, reaching the
value of 3.7/1000 inhabitants. In a rural household, the average number of members is of 3 people. In
a municipality, there are on average 3-4 component villages, with an average distance of 7 km among
the farthest of them. The average surface is about 6,5000 hectares, of which more than 90% is outside
towns. A high number of young people from the rural environment works in different activities in other
EU Member States, and they are present only on paper in the municipality.
Consequently:
- The election of a mayor in Romania is made on average with 500-700 votes expressed
universally;
- Who manages to personally excite between 13.5-20% of the present members of the
local community has the highest probability of becoming mayor;
- The rest of approximately 80-90% of the community members, practically, do not
matter.
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For the purpose of this study, we will divide the ELECTORAL BRIBERY into two categories, defined
as follows:

- The first is defined as EXEMPTION, ACCORDING TO THE FISCAL PROCEDURES, OF THE

DEBTS TO THE LOCAL BUDGET OF THE INHABITANTS THAT ARE NATURAL PERSONS
from the rural environment in exchange of his vote. The relation between cause (authors
note: exemption of the due amount to the budget by the civil officers or by the mayor) and
effect (authors note: granting the vote) can be also understood;

- The second is defined as EXEMPTION, ACCORDING TO THE FISCAL PROCEDURES, OF

THE OUTSTANDING DEBTS OF THE LEGAL PERSONS/CERTIFIED PERSON/INDIVIDUAL
COMPANY/FAMILY BUSINESS with registered office within the municipality.

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 THE FIRST CATEGORY OF
COVERED ELECTORAL BRIBERY

1. The action/inaction of the specialized body within the mayors office, led exclusively by
the mayor, is not only one type of conditioning a person to vote the mayor, but also a type
of blackmail and making dependent for an indefinite period. For instance, through the lack
of adoption of measures imperatively imposed by the fiscal legislation, the natural person
debtor to the local budget does not have the possibility to exercise the rights provided for by the
law (submitting appeal to enforcement, demanding the deferral of the debt etc.), being therefore
in the presence of multiple violations of the values protected by the law.

2. The inaction of the specialized body within the mayors office (Local Tax Directorate) led
by the mayor to follow the debts owed by the natural person to the local budget, although its
purpose it to express the vote in a certain sense, reduces the degree of voluntary
conformance of all subjects with tax reports within TADC because they only perceive the
absence of any real collection action regarding the owed sums (absence of consequences, power
of example);

3. The non-collection of fines, materialized through the inaction of the specialized body
within the mayors office (Local Tax Directorate) led by the mayor to follow the debts owed
by the natural person to the local budget under this title, generates, in the citizens perception
residing in the municipality, the certainty that THE ANTISOCIAL ACTS from the
contraventional sphere ARE NOT followed by the states firm counteraction as the
payment of the fines is not made through forced tax execution measures PROVIDED FOR
BY THE LAW. The persistence in time of this phenomenon, in more than 80% of TADC of
Romania, not only reduces the degree of voluntary compliance to payment, but it also reduces,
in a significant manner, the states authority and the authority of its structures in the
territory. In order to give an example, we mention the case of the localities that have a
population mostly formed by gipsies or have representatives involved in continuous illegal
activities and temporal manifestation with an increased frequency, who have registered
amounts that exceed 3 million RON for non-collected fines to the local budget. At the level of
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 these municipalities, different cases have been identified where groups of citizens were
sanctioned contraventionally on a daily basis for different antisocial acts, mostly transportation
of wooden material without having the documents provided by the law or repeated calls to 112
(the single European emergency number) for no reason at all. None of the fines ordered by the
competent bodies was under forced execution or surveyed by the mayors under the
conditions of the tax code. The report of insolvency has not been elaborated for any of the fines
and, consequently, the competent court of jurisdiction has not been notified for the issuance of
the warrant for community service.

NOTE: In some cases, knowing how important the power of example is, the mayor decides
SELECTIVELY upon the application of fiscal guidelines regarding the forced execution of bad
taxpayers exclusively in relation to the political opponents within the locality and/or their
supporters.

NOTE 2: A particular category is represented by the mayors that use authentic methods to recover
the debts owed to the local budget. Among these methods, we can list the refusal to issue the identity
card, the refusal to issue certificates to those who have debts to the local budget, the refusal to issue
social grants, heating grants etc. These actions are as dangerous as the deliberate non-application of
fiscal guidelines, because they are not regulated by the fiscal legislation, the procedures being defined
as FISCAL OUTLAWRY, and the citizen misunderstanding the mayors action as representing an
execution of the legal provisons (Law 215/2001), issued by the state authorities (in fact, THE CITIZEN
FROM THE RURAL ENVIRONMENT IS MADE TO BELIEVE THAT THE REFUSAL TO ISSUE THE
IDENTITY CARD, OR THE SOCIAL GRANT, IS A PUNISHING MEASURE PROVIDED FOR BY THE LAW
WHICH IS COMPLETELY FALSE).

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 THE SECOND CATEGORY OF
COVERED ELECTORAL BRIBERY

The action/inaction of the specialized body within the mayors office (Local Tax Directorate) led
exclusively by the mayor in relation to the non-collection and non-surveillance of fiscal procedures
regarding the debts owed to the local budget by the legal persons has a multiple negative impact:

1. It is severely affected by the free and perfect competition on the Romania market and
inside the European Union. In order to give an example, we will use the collected data
regarding the municipalities in which one or multiple companies operate and have as main
scope of activity the freight and/or passenger transportation or the exploitation of non-
renewable mineral resources. In case of contraventional sanctions (fines), issued by different
state authorities in relation to these companies, the mayor and the specialized body within the
mayors office have not made any approaches for the notification of the debtor to the local
budget or for recovering the amounts through forced execution, according to the fiscal
procedural guidelines. In the same time, a business operator with the same scope of activity, but
residing in county capital cities, is forced to pay to the local budget the fines or the
contraventional sanctions, otherwise being subject to forced execution by the Local Tax
Directorate of the municipality, ACCORDING TO THE LEGAL PROVISIONS IN FORCE. Therefore,
legal persons with the same scope of activity have a different fiscal treatment, some of
them being forced to pay the tax obligations and some of them not, with the direct
consequence of distorting the freight and capital market from the perspective of the free
and loyal competition.

2. Making and maintaining the companies directors dependent which also represents a
potential indirect control, with electoral purpose, upon the employees of those
companies.

3. The negative impact on the legal guidelines regarding public assets, considering that the
business operators that are not subject to surveillance for the payment of the local taxes,

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 including fines, practice dumping prices, eliminating from the market those business
operators that are good payers.

We evoke that:

AT THE LEVEL OF THE TADS LOCAL BUDGETS, ON THE LAST 5 YEARS, THERE IS ON AVERAGE 1
MILLION RON/TADC, NON-COLLECTED, COMING FROM TAXES AND FINES.
TOTALLY, AT THE LEVEL OF TADC WE OBTAIN, IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, A NON-COLLECTED
AMOUNT, ESTIMATED AT 2,463 MILLION RON, MEANING THAT OVER A HALF A BILLIARD OF EURO
(546,180,286.062 EURO ON 16.01.2015). THESE AMOUNTS CAN BE CONSIDERED, MOSTLY, AS
TAKING THE FORM OF COVERED ELECTORAL BRIBERY.

The passage of time demonstrates that this conduct, conspicuously illegal, has not been sanctioned by
the competent bodies.

The direct consequence of the state bodies passivity is the massive decrease of the voluntary
compliance to payment, the reduction of the importance and efficiency of the state institutions
authority and the generation of a state of uncertainty for the citizens, especially for those coming
from the rural environment.

WE APPRECIATE THAT THE PERPETUATION OF THESE PRACTICES IS NO LONGER TOLERABLE,

CONSIDERING THE STATUS OF MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION THAT ROMANIA ACHIEVED
IN 2007.

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 ANNEX 1
The Mayor the authorising officer of the local budget

The authorising officer is the person that decides upon the usage of the local credits, granted according
to the local budgetary provisions, and that has the quality of budget officers. According to the legal
regulations in force, the leaders of the public institutions with legal personality have the quality of
budget officers. Taking into account the rights and duties that they have in the process of budget usage,
the authorising officers are divided in three categories: main, secondary and tertiary.

A mayor (in old Latin primaries, meaning the first, the main) is a politician that has the role of official
executive authority. There is worldwide a variety of local law and habits concerning the mayors
powers ad liabilities, and also the ways in which one can become a mayor. In Romania, the mayors
most important features are:
- To be a party member with a significant market share, in order to be part of the political
world and to be actively involved in the political life;
- To be an authorising officer attentive to the needs of the party in which he is part of.
Why must the mayor be part of a political party? As a member, he needs to comply with the regulations
of the partys policy, under the penalty of being excluded from the party and most certainly of losing the
obtained public position.
Invariably, the party member has:

- To pay the contribution to the party, not to refuse without reason the tasks received from
the hierarchically higher political leadership;

- To prove in all his actions and endorsements the loyalty to the party and to its mission.

Why must he be a good authorising officer? Because the financing sources of a partys activities are:
contributions, donations, revenues coming from private activities, funding from the state budget.
Among these sources, the donations are the most generous financial resources for the political
parties.
Here the donations coming indirectly from budget financial resources can be included.
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