Dan Voiculescu

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For the mathematician see Dan Voiculescu (mathematician).

Dan Voiculescu (born September 25, 1946) is a Romanian politician and former businessman.

He is the founder and president of the Romanian Humanist Party, now the Conservative Party (PC) and the owner of Intact, a potent media group, comprising among others the newspapers Jurnalul Naţional and Gazeta Sporturilor and the TV stations Antena 1, Antena 2, Antena 3 and Antena 4. When his involvement in politics deepened, he gave up the management of his business empire.

Voiculescu has been accused by the press of collaborationism with the Communist regime's Securitate (or even that he had access to Ceauşescu's secret bank accounts), and these accusations were echoed in international media too, e.g. the Financial Times. Financial Times however retracted that article.

Voiculescu actively denied his involvement with the Securitate: he sued several journalists for slander and won all the trials. He proposed and obtained the disclosure of the undercover Securitate agents in the "Dunărea" foreign trade company, notoriously a Securitate agency, by opening the archives of this company.

However, the CNSAS (Consiliul Naţional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securităţii - the National Council for Studying the Securitate's Archives) announced in June 2006 that Voiculescu was indeed an informer of the political police, having two code names, Felix and Mircea. Voiculescu admitted he collaborated with the Securitate, but declared that nobody suffered from his informative . Dan Voiculescu announced he will sue the CNSAS for this decision, and there are many comments in the Romanian press foreseeing another success in this action.Currently, due to Voiculescu and other cases in which the decision of the CNSAS is likely to have been influenced by political or personal reasons, the CNSAS has lost all credibility, is criticised including by its members and there are insistent proposals from the press, the public and the civil society for its supression.

Exceeded by the groundless but persistent allegations and innuendo against him, Dan Voiculescu, in his capacity of a Senator of Romania, requested the establishing of two dedicated Parliamentary Commissions to investigate two long-pending problems of public interest. Consequently, in October 2006 a Parliamentary Commission was formed to clear up the problem of the alleged Ceausescu’s accounts – after a lot of effort, promise and public expenditure there being nowadays no evidence or clear indication that these accounts (the so-called “Devil’s Fortune”) ever existed. Let alone evidence or clear indication about the destination of the late dictator’s money. And the other Parliamentary Commission formed on Dan Voiculescu’s request is to investigate into the archive of the “Dunarea” Foreign Trade Enterprise, a company formerly controlled by the infamous Securitate and whose profits allegedly alimented the Ceausescu accounts.

The initiative comes after a long series of similar requests made by Dan Voiculescu, including to the President of Romania, and is an expression of the Conservative leader’s opinion that as long as Romania is haunted by its past, we should spare no effort and leave no stone unturned in order to shed light on our past: it is only the truth that can cure us of our ghosts.