The Romanian Minister of Innovation and Digitalization resigned after reporters’ investigation, and they found serious violations of his resume and the evidence he plagiarized from academic papers.
Florin Roman (Florin Roman) was at RomaniaThe new coalition government resigned from his post after publishing a third article in Romania’s Freedom newspaper questioning his claimed educational credentials within a month.
He said he did not want the suspicions surrounding him to affect Prime Minister Nikola Chuka.
“I resigned as minister today,” Roman wrote online after a government meeting. “When white becomes black, when everything is misunderstood, when you make major mistakes, but when you lynched from the first day in the office-it’s too much.”
Libertatea reporters accused Roman of plagiarizing part of his master’s thesis and said they could not find the 2006 academic thesis listed in the politician’s resume. The newspaper also reported that Roman made misleading or false statements about the university he attended.
Roman strongly denied the paper’s findings, calling it part of a “slander me campaign”.
Several well-known Romanian politicians, including the former prime minister, have already Accused of plagiarism in recent years.
Dacian Theolos, who served as prime minister of the caretaker cabinet from 2015 to 2017, described Roman’s resignation as a “necessary act.”
“Florin Roman is not a victim. (He) is a representative of the Romanian political class. They destroyed the best things in Romania,” Theolos said, adding that fabricated qualifications prevented “competent and honest People in politics”.
Journalist Emilia Sercan, who has investigated dozens of high-profile plagiarism cases in Romania, described forged academic works as the “Achilles heel” of politicians.
“This is bad news for politicians: if your wealth is sheltered, your’academic’ works will be on the library shelves,” Selkan wrote online on Wednesday.
Romania is an EU country with a population of approximately 19 million. It ranks 69th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perception Index.
