Romanian police question pro-Russian presidential candidate following Kremlin interference

Romanian prosecutors on Wednesday detained Călin Georgescu, the far-right candidate in the country’s presidential elections, which are set to be re-run due to alleged Russian interference.

It comes as the country’s Prosecutor’s Office announced its criminal investigations section had carried out 47 searches on Wednesday morning, targeting 27 individuals and four premises connected to crimes including actions against the constitutional order.

It is not clear whether Georgescu was arrested or questioned voluntarily. While local media have reported an arrest warrant has been issued for him, Reuters stated he is not currently considered a suspect in the investigation, which also includes crimes related to electoral financing, supporting a fascist and antisemitic organization, and weapons and pyrotechnic article offenses.

Georgescu — who continues to poll as the country’s favorite candidate, although it is unclear whether he will be permitted to run again —  was spoken to by police while driving on Wednesday morning and later went inside the Prosecutor’s Office, according to Romanian media reports.

These reports named Horațiu Potra — who runs the company providing Georgescu’s bodyguards — and Potra’s partner as particular subjects of interest who are believed to have links to senior figures in Moscow. The Prosecutor’s Office stressed that its interest in individuals should not undermine the principle of the presumption of innocence.

It follows Romania’s constitutional court last December making the unprecedented move of annulling the first round of the country’s presidential election following the declassification of intelligence showing Russian interference influenced the result.

“The electoral process for the election of the President of Romania will be repeated in its entirety,” the court declared, striking down the result in which Georgescu romped ahead of his opponents to a surprising victory.

Intelligence documents declassified and released by the outgoing president, Klaus Iohannis, assessed that Georgescu's victory in the first round was down to a widespread state-sponsored interference on his behalf.

The decision to re-run the entire election process has been criticized by opposition parties who complained it was an attempt by the incumbent major parties to hold on to power, as those incumbents failed to make the runoff themselves.

Georgescu described the investigation on Wednesday in the language of Romania's communist past, complaining on Facebook that “the communist Bolshevik system is continuing its heinous abuse” and accusing the Prosecutor's Office as “looking to invent evidence to justify stealing the election and to do anything in their efforts to block a new candidacy from me.”

The constitutional court’s decision was among the many criticisms of European states expressed by U.S. Vice President JD Vance during the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, when he referenced what he described as “the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from [Romania’s] continental neighbors” to re-run the electoral process.

He added: “You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”