PM Ciuca did not plagiarize, doctor's degree is not a false official document in sense of criminal law

The General Prosecutor's Office maintains that prime minister Nicolae Ciuca cannot be accused of forgery in the file in which he was accused of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis, because the diploma is only a document that certifies/attests the doctorate title and does not constitute a false official document in the sense of the criminal law.

On Friday, the General Prosecutor's Office published the ordinance of March 15, which ordered the closure of the criminal file opened following a complaint in which it was claimed that prime minister Nicolae Ciuca had plagiarized in his doctoral thesis.

Nicolae Ciuca was also accused by a whistleblower of using forgery, namely in a continuous form.

In reply, the Prosecutor's Office considers that the prime minister cannot be accused of this crime, because the doctor's degree is not considered a false official document, in the sense of the criminal law.

The Prosecutor's Office's conclusion: "The fact does not exist".

The file was opened in February 2022, and the criminal investigation blocked the doctoral thesis research by the Carol I National Defense University for more than a year.

Journalist Emilia Sercan from PressOne published, on January 18, 2022, an article in which she claims that prime minister Nicolae Ciuca, a general in the reserve, would have plagiarized in his doctoral thesis with the title "The dimension of the engagement of the Romanian Army in multinational joint operations", supported in year 2003 at the Carol I National Defense University. Emilia Sercan says that several pages from the prime minister's work were copied without the texts taken having been correctly attributed to the original authors and without having been marked with quotation marks, as required by academic norms.

In his turn, prime minister Nicolae Ciuca declared that the choice of the topic of the doctoral thesis was predominantly based on the personal experience accumulated in the international missions in which he participated directly, individually or together with the 26th Infantry Battalion: the UN peacekeeping mission in Angola (1996- 1997), the NATO mission within the SACEUR strategic reserve for the Western Balkans (2000-2001) and the coalition mission in Afghanistan (2002).