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Romanians Sent to Prison After Corruption Over Microsoft Licences in Schools

posted by martyb on Tuesday March 29 2016, @06:11AM   
from the microsoft-and-fraud dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

TechRights reports

Last month, we took note of Microsoft [licenses] in the midst of high-profile corruption and a former Romanian minister is finally going to prison over it. To quote one article about this (in English, not Romanian):

"Romania's high court of cassation and justice on Thursday jailed the former telecommunications minister, Gabriel Sandu, for two years for money laundering, abuse of office, and bribery involving the lease of Microsoft IT licenses for schools.

"The ex-mayor of the eastern town of Piatra Neamt, Gheorghe Stefan, and two other businessmen who acted as middlemen also got jail terms of up to three years.

"The four defendants have also to pay a total of almost 10 million euros in compensation. The Supreme Court's sentence is not final."

It is worth noting that, owing to such corruption, it is Microsoft--not GNU/Linux and Free software--that makes it into Romanian schools. Recent reports serve to indicate Microsoft corruption in other countries; this is still the subject of a US-led probe which maybe some more corruption can somehow scuttle.

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Original Submission

• Re:Fallout Re:Fallout (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @08:19PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @08:19PM (#324501)

  people at the heart of epic tech projects

  Tech projects you say and how wrong you are.

  Here's how the "business as usual" look like for a govt tender in Romania:

  1. the boss of a software company knows someone in the govt, high enough in the hierarchy - in most cases, a minister, but some govt agency directors are good enough
  2. somehow, they decide there's an opportunity to plunder some budget money allocated to IT (either govt budget or european funds), so a project needs to be created. Sometimes the project is really needed, sometimes... meh.... just something to show for the money.
     In any case, the "commissions" are sorted out in advance
  3. the software boss set the team to work on the request for tender document. That's right, the request for tender is not written by a govt agency, but by a certain bidder, the "designated future winner". Of course, the tech requirements are tweaked to favor the strength of the bidder, and so are the organisation selection criteria (annual turn over, past experience, etc)
  4. once the request for tender is ready, it's handed out to the govt official... first official step, the announcement for the project is trumpeted, usually in a way to emphasize the initiative of the ministry/minister (of course, if the original govt official is not the minister, then some "commission" is set aside for the minister her/himself. They may need to renegotiate the level of cuts to go to each party - in TFA case at hand, probably this step was defective, the minister was expecting some 1.3 MEuro extra, the winner couldn't pay, so it decided to "leak" some info somewhere)
  5. the tender process follows the "official" path, all the publicly visible steps are respected. Sometimes, some "phantom companies" are created just to stack the bidding; they'll "lose" anyway, but this may be needed to make sure that the project lands in the lap of the designated winner.
     If somehow the winner is not the "designated" one (which happens rarely) or if someone successfully contests the result (in court), it just happens the govt "find" some flaws in the "bidding process" and another round (with an adjusted request for tender) will be pushed some time in the future
  6. when the designated winner takes the contract, the project goes ahead and will result in delays, crappy systems, budget overruns, you name it. But it doesn't matter, the ministry may impose some penalties, but its only wool over the eyes of the public: too harsh penalties would result in diminished "commissions" and more money throw into the project ("requirement changes", you see?) means more money for the same percentage cut of commisions

  The tragedy is when the result of such projects are really needed: the expense of maintaining the system (actually, make it work in the first place) will be subject to other projects, more money, more commissions.

  Projects like SEI, eRomania, IT health system and heaps of others I don't know went ahead on this pattern.
  Speaking of the pattern, you can see the same in projects initiated by local administration (municipalities, public utilities administrations, county libraries, etc) - it's only the budget and commissions that changes (central govt works in the order of 100M-Euro projects, local admin goes into 10K-1M-Euro range).

  About 20% of the project budget goes one way or another into "commission", as a rough estimation. To squander the money for them, the winner will need to invent lots of fictive expenses, see the case of Irina Socol [romania-insider.com]. Her fall was probably due to a change in govt officials, the new ones having other industry favorites; the slate had to be cleaned before changing the "traditional suppliers".

  Please note we aren't speaking of bribes, not because its a bad words, but because it doesn't describe the "economic" reality. See, a bribe is usually an one-off fixed payment and can't have that in this kind of unpredictable and ever-changing world .

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• Re:Fallout Re:Fallout (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 29 2016, @09:58PM

  by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday March 29 2016, @09:58PM (#324540) Journal

  I don't dispute the pattern you've described. It's universal. Corruption happens in every country in exactly the way you've described. In Romania, perhaps, it's more apparent because there are not so many layers of lard as here.

  All I meant to do is say, how great is it that SN has members on the inside of this and can comment. That's the beauty, and for which you all ought to take a short, self-aware bow.

  Romania is quite awesome for breaking with the global media narrative. Bravo, Romania!

  --
  Washington DC delenda est.

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  • Re:Fallout (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 29 2016, @10:59PM

    by c0lo (156) on Tuesday March 29 2016, @10:59PM (#324552) Journal

    In Romania, perhaps, it's more apparent because there are not so many layers of lard as here.

    Well, seems plausible. Wikipedia entry on the scandal has a quite impressive list of people [wikipedia.org] involved - including 9 former ministers.

    Romania is quite awesome for breaking with the global media narrative. Bravo, Romania!

    Mmmm... some googling over the scandal reveals we should congratulate... FBI [romania-insider.com]

    The investigation in the corruption case in which nine former Romanian ministers are accused of taking bribes for buying overpriced Microsoft software licenses from public funds hasn’t started in Romania, but in the U.S., said the former director of Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) Teodor Melescanu.

    He added that the investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and that this is not a politically influenced investigation/vendetta in Romania, as some politicians claim.

    Besides, the cynical in me says: if the layers of lard are less, maybe the simple fact of buying MS licenses should be punishable with jail.
    Did you know anything to say Romania's education switched away from MS software?
    Because I found something on the contrary [ubuntuforums.org]:

    A chain of stores offered last year for free to 159 schools in Romania 1749 functional notebooks ( Asus X101CH ) with Edubuntu on them.
    Unfortunately I learned that the Ministry of Education began to wipe the Edubuntu system on those notebooks and install Windows .

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

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