Despite the ongoing effort to beatify Laura Codruta Kovesi, not everyone in the business community happy. In this moronic Bloomberg piece, Ion Tiriac and others complain that prosecuting government officials for corruption is bad for business:

Tiriac told journalists he had spent more than two years trying to line up the necessary government approvals, but a sweeping crackdown on corruption has made civil servants reluctant to sign even routine documents. “They are afraid to even breathe because it may lead to the anticorruption prosecutors’ office,” the businessman says he was told.

Well, my word!

Dietmar Dumlich, the European Investment Bank’s representative for Romania, says the bank has approved €1.7 billion in loans for infrastructure projects but can’t get anyone to sign the loan documents. “We find ourselves in limbo,” he says.

In other words, government officials just haven’t figured out new ways to steal money without getting caught.

But here’s the most hilarious part of the Bloomberg piece:

One reason for the sorry state of Romanian roads is that money allocated for improvements has often ended up in the pockets of politicians and their cronies, says Victor Alistar, who heads the local chapter of anticorruption group Transparency International.

Uh, what? Victor Alistar was originally nominated for a cabinet post under Victor Ponta’s first administration but had to have his name withdrawn because he had already been convicted of corruption (details in Romanian here) and was banned from holding office. Since he couldn’t get a job working for the government, he then went to work for Transparency International. Nice work if you can get it ;)

Let’s review then, shall we?

• Government officials haven’t figured out how to steal these days without getting caught; and
• Everyone misses the old days when all you had to do was bribe the right people to get business done in Romania.

Don’t worry, banks and businessmen, things will return to normal soon!