Fighting Corruption Proves Costly for Romania’s Embattled Journalists

Sercan then filed a complaint with the police's Internal Affairs Department, alleging that investigators had leaked the pictures in an attempt to compromise and defame her. Adding insult to injury, the police waited until March 8 to forward her complaint to the Prosecutor's Office at the 4th District Court of Bucharest; it was subsequently redirected to the Prosecutor's Office at the Bucharest Court of Appeal.

"It is outrageous that the police tried to delay the registration of the complaint at the prosecutor's office for as long as possible; even the prosecutor delayed an answer to me regarding the number on the criminal file," she relates.

Investigative journalist Emilia Sercan. Photo: Twitter Plagiarism plots

Sercan believes it is her work that has made her a target. Since 2016, she has specialised in uncovering plagiarists among Romanian government officials, military and police officers, and other public individuals. She discovered that many of their doctoral dissertations were as unoriginal as some of the world's legendary literary hoaxes.

In response, over the last six years she has been subject to threats, intimidation and insults. One such incident resulted in both the dean of the Police Academy, whose doctoral dissertation Sercan had alleged was plagiarised, and his deputy being found guilty of inciting a police officer to issue death threats against the reporter and attempt to blackmail her in 2019. In the aftermath of the verdict, the Police Academy lost its right to award doctorate degrees.

The latest round of attacks that precipitated her claims of invasion of privacy, the subsequent attempt to compromise her and the alleged police coverup began after her January 18 article accused Nicolae Ciuca,...