microsoft - the guardian angel - wordpress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · the guardian angel 13 book....

77

Upload: others

Post on 30-Sep-2020

0 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator
Page 2: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

DAN COSTE Email: [email protected] Publisher: Aldo Press, Bucharest ISBN: 973-701-025-6

Dan Coste

MICROSOFT THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

Vol. 1

Bucharest, June 2010

Page 3: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

As a motto Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited: Microsoft guarantees to defend the

Romanian Government against any claims raised by a third non-affiliated party and we will pay the sum established by a final judicial decision (or according to a transaction agreed by us):

- claims referring to a commercial product or remedy that violates the patent, copyright or trademark or illegally acquires the commercial secret, or

- claims according to which any service deliverables violates copyrights or trademark or illegally acquires a commercial secret,

You have the obligation to notify us promptly, in writing, about any such claim and you will grant to us exclusive control in defending you against this claim or in transacting the claim.

Page 4: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

4 MICROSOFT

In case we receive information about a violation claim regarding a commercial product, remedy or service deliverable, we may, on our own expense and without any obligations, (i) to obtain for you the right to continue using the product, or (ii) to modify the product, remedy or service deliverable or to replace it with an equivalent having the same functionality, in order to stop representing a violation, case in which you will immediately cease to use the product, the remedy or the service deliverable on which the claim was raised.

FOREWORD Most of the country's population experiences

the feeling that they live in a corrupt or a very corrupt country; and justice is among the most corrupt (to the bone) state institutions. Romania has so far received the greatest number of condemnations from the European Court of Human Rights because of the Romanian justice’s failure to comply with civil and property rights. Due to the amount of over 12 million euro in compensation - that was summoned to pay to those who suffered from a corrupt justice - our country holds the first position in the European Union in this shameful ranking. Recently, probably in world premiere, a judge from a State Supreme Court of Justice has been put behind bars to be held for investigation and then sent to court. It is judge Florin Costiniu, involved in a corruption scandal, its main subject being PSD Senator Cătălin Voicu. Costiniu was released after two days of detention by his fellow judges in the High Court of Cassation and Justice.

As an investigation journalist, with decades of expertise in the field, I am among those who have long since come to believe that the Romanian justice is among the most corrupt state institutions. If people

Page 5: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

6 MICROSOFT

only perceive this cancer that is consuming the Romanian society, me myself, I have confronted it on hundreds of occasions.

I have had to do with men, facts, circumstances, confrontations, unmeasured pride and foolish ambitions, which were displayed both in and outside courtrooms. Because of my boldness to interfere with the dirty business of one or another, I played the defendant`s part in about 100 criminal and civil cases, being dragged into police departments, Prosecutor`s Offices, courts and tribunals. With the help of God Almighty, the charges against me have all been dropped by the courts and the prosecution authorities based on the evidence that I have presented to support the articles published in several newspapers and magazines. In addition, I was called before the Honorable Council of the Romanian Press Club (CRP), chaired by the famous Cristian Tudor Popescu and the no less famous Mihai Tatulici, to give explanations about my disclosures on high-level corruption and intelligence theft, which I had been proving in the articles containing many testimonies.

During all this time I had the opportunity to observe how some litigants "died" with justice on their side, because justice representatives motivated their decisions in black and white, stating that white was black and vice versa.

If we were to believe some analysts who consider that Romania is not (figuratively speaking) in Europe but in the East, corruption – notably, and bribery and influence peddling - in particular, should not be regarded as a sad reality; but as a state of mind or as a second nature of the Romanian people, from the poorest to the wealthiest. We all bribe

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 7

happily and resort to acquaintances when we are in need for something. It is a state of normality and not the exception from the rule. Then why are we taken by surprise when the civilized countries place Romania among the most corrupt in the world? We have the corruption that we deserve just as we fondly and joyfully elect our corrupt leaders every four years.

Judges are among the most privileged categories of our country, having many-figure salaries. They have been allegedly given money to avoid the possibility to be corrupted. However, as corruption is already ingrained in the blood of many of them, the attempt has proved to be futile. The more goods and values they have, the more they long for. A similar case is that of doctors, who have been complaining for twenty years for being underpaid and that is the truth. Nevertheless, nobody has seriously discussed yet the matter of incompetent doctors, nor has asked why only so few have been removed from the medical system because of malpraxis. In addition, on the top of them all, I would like to express my great bewilderment: if doctors are so poorly paid, why does everyone have luxurious apartments, holiday homes and the most expensive cars only after a few years practice? Where does the money come from? - because they doubtly come from salary.

During the hundreds of journalistic investigations that I have accomplished, I faced all sorts of situations, some more unusual than others. However, of all, one far surpasses them and that is why I have decided to write about it. This book is nothing but the astonishing introduction to a true story that to a normal person would rather resemble

Page 6: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

8 MICROSOFT

a science fiction story. Perhaps other volumes will follow, containing all the implications of the matter, often inconceivable for a healthy mind.

In a few words, it is about an intelligent man who created software intelligence recognized and awarded at both European and international level. Soon, the product was pirated and a genuine, well-organized network has begun to take advantage of his work. A network coordinated from a high level by…high-ranking civil servants.

When he complained to the competent authorities, he found himself placed in charge and investigated, dragged through courts and receiving threats even from senior police officers within the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police. Who, fierce defenders of the law, "warned him" that if he did not calm down, he would lose his right to leave the country (although he has both Romanian and Swiss citizenship) and there will be always the risk that something bad might happen to his family.

To silence him, after two previous attacks and based on proven false documents, furthermore a house was stolen from him. Hard to believe, huh?

However, it is the truth. Except that, after nearly six years, justice is still to come. Moreover, one of the judges who decided that black is white is Viorica Costiniu, from the Bucharest Court of Appeal, none other than the wife of judge Florin Costiniu from the High Court of Cassation and Justice, detained, released and investigated for corruption within the mafia-type of group coordinated by senator Cătălin Voicu.

By the end of 2009, during a meeting – myself as special reporter at “Cotidianul” daily – with the Romanian Prosecutor General Laura CodruŃa Kovesi

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 9

and Marius Iacob, chief prosecutor of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Prosecution within the Prosecutor's Office of the High Court of Cassation and Justice (PICCJ), I was informed that the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) no longer has any files older than two years. At that moment, I brought into discussion the case of the intelligence theft from OMNIS GROUP LLC, unsolved for over six years, corroborated with the theft of a house belonging to the owner of this company. The two looked deeply and with meaning into each other’s eyes, and following that, Iacob gave us the following statement: "I am acquainted with the case, but the things are more complicated, given the complexity of the file. It is for this reason that it takes longer."

Aha!

Page 7: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

CHAPTER I

If You Are Not Part of the Solution, You Are Part of the Problem

The owner of OMNIS GROUP left the country

during Ceauşescu`s regime and returned in 1990, but not with a lot of money to trade or to invest in no matter what, and later to exploit the investment. Nor did he come back with promises and bribes in return for which to conclude contracts with the state. The man has invested in Romanian intelligence, in order to prove that Romanians are not more stupid than others, but on the contrary. The consequences of this audacity are presented below.

Established in 1990, OMNIS GROUP LLC

was the first Romanian company established exclusively for software development. The company employed during 1990 - 2000 over 100 young people, graduates of the Faculty of Computer Science, Cybernetics and Informatics in Romania, at the end of 2000 having 48 permanent employees. OMNIS was also the first Romanian partner of the American giant Microsoft.

Due to ten years of hard efforts and investments, in 2000 OMNIS created the first Romanian original ERP product (Enterprise Resource Planning) – the ISIS system - recognized

Page 8: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

12 MICROSOFT

and appreciated as such by Microsoft Corporation. The software was presented on Bill Gates’ company`s intranet as one of the best eight products in the world at that time.

The ERP system is a software tool that facilitates the integration of all the information of an organization into a unique platform. The goal of ERP is to ensure data transparency within the organization and to facilitate access to any type of useful information to support the activities. Application areas are production (planning, tracking and controlling), management (stock inventories, suppliers, payments and receipts), human resources and payroll (salary calculation and staff information management), accounting (financial accounting records), assets (fixed assets management and depreciation), CRM (customer relationship management), business intelligence (reports, analysis, forecasting).

In 2001, in the "Microsoft EMEA RAD Awards”

competition held in Amsterdam, OMNIS GROUP LLC won the first prize for the best ERP product in Europe, named ISIS.net. This happened by the time when the company of Bill Gates had not been developing such a product. More than that, in another competition organized by Microsoft Corporation, in Paris in 2002, it won yet another prize for the best use of open Internet technologies.

The Wicked Protocol At a first glance, the following subsection

would have nothing to do with the subject of this

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13

book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator Cătălin Voicu, the first Member of Parliament to be arrested under suspicions of high-level corruption, was part of the secret structure that we will refer to as follows. The financier Sebastian Vlădescu has also significantly benefited from the secret and illegal services of a dubious institution to which establishment he contributed, in 1998.

Following the criticism of the European Union

that Romania has no structure to fight against corruption, in 1998 was founded the most feared Secret Police structure since the Revolution. So feared and so secret that, to this day, no one knows whether it is still operating or not, for what purpose, who chairs it and where does it’s money come from. All key decision-makers who could provide information about these issues are struck by amnesia or refuse to provide explanations for the legitimate questions of the public opinion. Note that, at the time of this structure`s establishment, there was no legal framework to regulate such an activity.

During Radu Vasile`s governance, a protocol was signed among different ministries for the purpose of “cooperation in the fight against organized crime and corruption”, which stipulated the establishment of the INTERFORCES NATIONAL UNIT. And this was based on the permanent activity of the CENTRAL OPERATIVE GROUP (GOC), unrelated to what we understand by criminal investigation, but based on the creation of intelligence files meant for blackmail, “operative games and combinations" etc., even for a “preventive purpose". The structure received funds

Page 9: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

14 MICROSOFT

from the Ministry of Public Finance and was coordinated by the chief of the anticorruption, criminal investigation and forensic section within the General Prosecutor`s Office. Component entities were (and probably still are, since so far nobody has declared the abolishment of GOC): the Ministry of Justice (Valeriu Stoica), the Public Ministry, the Ministry of Interior (Gavril Dejeu), respectively: the Romanian Intelligence Service (Costin Georgescu ) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (Cătălin Harnagea).

GOC Structure: 1. General Mircea Zărie - Deputy Attorney

General 2. Secretary of State Liviu Popescu 3. Major General Nicolae Berechet 4. Major General Anghel Andreescu 5. Major General Nicolae Oprea 6. Major General Virgil Ardelean aka. The Fox 7. Major General Ionel Crăciun To a further notice, the surveillance, the audio

and video interceptions and the illegal creation of intelligence files by the GOC targeted businessmen, a broad category of civil servants, MPs, politicians, members of the civil society, etc. It must also be said that the group co-opted employees from the country's most important intelligence services, from the Ministry of Interior, as well as experienced prosecutors, who, in time, have not at all been affected by the political regimes that have succeeded to the government of the country, thanks to the potential of the information gathered during GOC activities.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 15

It was only in the early months of 2000, after

functioning "secretly" for more than a year, that GOC released a PLAN OF MEASURES (see Annex 1 at the end of the book), which apparently turned it legal. The National Anticorruption Prosecutor`s Office, the current National Anticorruption Directorate was not established at the time.

Beyond the declared purpose of keeping the so-called state secret and preventing corruption, GOC took possession of much information that, over time, was proven to having been used as methods of blackmail, defamation, intimidation and other similar illegal acts. On paper, this secret structure operated until August 2001 when another one replaced it, again shared among different ministries and planned by Prime Minister Adrian Năstase. Thus the NATIONAL COUNCIL for CRIME PREVENTION was born. In March 2005, this invention was also replaced by Călin Popescu Tăriceanu`s team with the COUNCIL for the COORDINATION of the NATIONAL ANTICORRUPTION STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION, which operated until 2007. What is the common denominator of all these more or less secret structures? An evident INEFFICIENCY and the creation of Secret Police files. The efficient results achieved by these bodies were limited to exposing several low ranking police officers in the villages, who had been bribed with two hens or a suckling pig, or a customs officer who had tarnished his reputation with the 200 $ he received, because he had a large family and an insufficient salary. Otherwise, nothing.

Nevertheless, there is also something interesting: no one can really say whether GOC is

Page 10: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

16 MICROSOFT

still operating today or not, even in an extremely secret manner. Interviewed by the press, Emil Constantinescu (former President of the country), Mircea Zărie (former coordinator of the GOC), Valeriu Stoica (former Minister of Justice) and Costin Georgescu (former Romanian Intelligence Service Director) shrugged their shoulders, looking helpless or amnesic. Only general Berechet was as accurate as possible in a statement given to ZIUA daily: "The mechanisms still exist and as for operating, they are still functional.” On what money and serving who, he no longer specified.

Throughout its uncertain existence, the activity

of GOC must have been a laborious one. Because the people involved in this Secret Police structure, real professionals, did not just sit around doing nothing, only being content to collect fat salaries from taxpayers` money without doing anything. Files after files had been created, then archived and some made public and capitalized on at the right moment. As it is not known whether GOC is currently operational or not, it is also not known what happened to the files created by the structure`s intelligence agents or who has possession of them. One should eventually solve this dilemma.

Another crucial detail of the case, which is the

subject of this paper: in early 2000, the financier Sebastian Vlădescu had reserved, in the National Registry of Commerce, the name “ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY”, to later establish this limited liability company. Vlădescu was a state secretary in the Ministry of Public Finance (which was financing the operation of GOC), taking benefits from the

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 17

"activities" performed by the structure that also kept under surveillance, operatively and secretly, successful businessmen.

It is worth mentioning a press release of a so-

called Anti-Corruption Secret Service, also secret, but that does not seem to be a state structure, since it harms GOC’s obscure activities:

GOC represents the institutionalization - at

state level - of the mafia inside the Police, especially in the offices dealing with the fight against organized crime, which has constituted a legal framework in order to extend its criminal activities, from harbor stealing to stealing the national economy and, in the future, from the European Funds allocated to Romania.

Secret Partnership In February 2001, apparently unrelated to the

disputes that were to follow several years later between OMNIS GROUP LLC and ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY LLC, the Adrian Năstase Government set up the Romanian Information Technology Promotion Group (Romanian Government Decision – RGD - no. 271/2001), based on a strategy elaborated by Dan Nica, Minister of Communications and Information Technology at that time.

Among the main attributions of the newly-created structure, we mention:

- approval of guideline projects and their related annual budgets, from the field of

Page 11: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

18 MICROSOFT

communications and information technology, in public institutions;

- approval and coordination of projects of more than 100.000 euro from the field, implemented in public institutions and national or commercial companies / corporations, in which the state is the major shareholder;

- approval of projects in communications and information technology that require government guarantees;

- the main credit release authorities will approve and coordinate projects of less than 100.000 euro in the field of communications and information technology.

The group is composed by: - The Prime Minister - Chairman; - The Minister of Finance; - The Minister of Administration and Interior; - The Minister for the Coordination of the

General Secretariat of the Government; - The Minister of Education and Research; - The Minister of Communications and

Information Technology; - The Minister-Delegate to the Ministry of

Education and Research - for research activity; - The Secretary of State for the Ministry of

Communications and Information Technology - Secretary.

Art. No.5. in RGD 271/2001 also stipulates

that the Romanian Information Technology Promotion Group may delegate to certain persons outside the group the expertise on project management and targets achievement established

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 19

by that decision. On top of it, on September 17 2003, in Rome,

ignoring any competition, the Năstase Cabinet signed with the company of Bill Gates a Strategic Government-Microsoft Partnership. In addition, over six weeks, in the greatest secrecy, the two parties signed the GSP (Government Security Program) on Microsoft's source code.

Within the “Government Leaders Forum”

(GLF) in Rome, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, and Dan Nica, Minister of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology discussed about the use of technology in modernizing governments and their interaction with the citizens. At the same time, it was signed a Letter of Intent on Strategic Partnership between the Romanian Government and Microsoft. The GLF work focused on the European Union goals to become, by 2010, the most dynamic, competitive and sustainable knowledge-based economy.

In Rome, Dan Nica also mentioned the e-government projects and, as well, those developed for the implementation of the computerized education system. The official also highlighted the benefits of the electronic auction mechanism, the significant amount of savings and the high security level achieved by using Microsoft technology.

After the signing ceremony of the Letter of Intent, Steve Ballmer stated: "I am amazed by the rapid pace of development, the ambition and the efforts of the Romanian government to make the transition to online, to use the Internet and the electronic techniques for saving public money and to

Page 12: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

20 MICROSOFT

place itself in the international field as a leader in using information technology. We appreciate the existing high-caliber talent on the Romanian market, especially in mathematics and computers.”

Despite these pompous declarations, by seeking additional information on the Microsoft website, I have not found any press release about a Strategic Partnership with the Government of Romania neither under the "Press Releases" heading, nor under "Top Stories".

Instead, the Romanian Microsoft website clearly states in Romanian that Steve Ballmer - Microsoft CEO and Minister Nica signed the “Letter of Intent for Strategic Partnership between Romania and Microsoft Corporation”; and it was certainly not just some “Strategic Partnership”, as the ministry claims in its own press release.

The preliminary stages that we have

mentioned would lead, on April 15 2004, to the signing of Contract no. 0115RO between Microsoft Ireland Operation Limited and the Romanian Government, by which the company becomes the Guardian Angel of the Romanian IT market.

An agreement was concluded for renting, in the period 2004 – 2009, 50.155 licenses worth U.S. $ 54,567,465 plus VAT, the amount being later increased, by granting new licenses and contract’s addenda, to U.S. $ 111.86 million.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 21

Strategic, Omnipotent Arbiter of the

Romanian IT Market Alike any contract, the parties that hold each

other in respect should impose their terms on each other, while assuming certain responsibilities. The Romanian part limited to the standard ones, commonly present in most commercial contracts. However, the Americans had additional claims, accepted without objection, by the Information Technology Promotion Group. We quote:

The following actions are forbidden: - Separation of components of a product that

contains multiple components, by operating them on distinct computers, by upgrading or downgrading them distinctly, or by separately transferring them, unless otherwise indicated in the rights to use the product;

- Renting, lending or owning products or service deliverables, unless otherwise agreed by us in a separated agreement;

- Deconstruction, decompilation, disassembling of products, service deliverables, remedies, unless otherwise explicitly stipulated by the law, regardless of this restriction.

At the same time, Microsoft is committed to

defend the Romanian Government against any of the following claims raised by a third non-affiliated party, and it will pay the sum established by a definitive judicial decision (or according to a transaction agreed by us):

Page 13: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

22 MICROSOFT

- claims referring to a commercial product or remedy that violates the patent, copyright or trademark or illegally acquires the commercial secret, or

- claims according to which any service deliverable violates copyrights or trademark or illegally acquires a commercial secret,

You have the obligation to notify us promptly,

in writing, about any such claim and you will grant to us exclusive control in defending you against this claim or in transactioning the claim.

In case we receive information about a

violation claim regarding a commercial product, remedy or service deliverable, we may, on our own expense and without any obligations, (i) to obtain for you the right to continue using the product, or (ii) to modify the product, remedy or service deliverables or to replace it with an equivalent having the same functionality, in order to stop representing a violation, case in which you will immediately cease to use the product, the remedy or the service deliverable on which the claim was raised. In case that, following the raise of a violation claim, a court of law will forbid the use of a commercial product, remedy or service deliverables, we, at our own choice, will either obtain the right to continue using it, to be replaced with a functional equivalent, to modify it according to laws and regulations or we will return the costs and we will terminate the licensing contract for the product, remedy or service deliverables for which the claim was raised.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 23

As a conclusion, by signing Contract 0115RO, the Romanian part granted the American part the right and the obligation to arbitrate the Romanian IT market. It also granted them the right to decide over the Romanian IT policy and the transfer of national, creative, innovative and intellectual resources into the field of software development and publishing, as shown later on.

The most important state institutions that have

benefited from Microsoft licenses are the following: - The Ministry of Justice; - The Ministry of Administration and Interior; - The Ministry of Defense; - The Public Ministry; - The Ministry of Health; - The Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs; - The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural

Development; - The National Anti-Corruption Department; - The National Office for Prevention and

Control of Money Laundering; - The National Administration of State

Reserves; - The Ministry of Transport, Constructions and

Tourism; - The Ministry of Education and Research; - The General Secretariat of the Government; - The Prime Minister`s Office; - The Financial Guard; - The Ministry of Economy and Commerce; - The Ministry of Public Finance; - The Ministry of Environment and Water

Management;

Page 14: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

24 MICROSOFT

- The National Institute of Statistics. A week after signing contract 0115RO, the

Political Investigations Group led by Mugur Ciuvică, former presidential adviser of Emil Constantinescu, published the following article:

A few days ago, the Romanian Government

informed that it would pay U.S. $ 54,500,000 to buy Microsoft licenses for the central public administration. The huge sum paid with public money and the total lack of transparency of this business raise big suspicions towards the opportunity and legality of this contract, as well as regarding the Government’s responsibility for public money.

The Government Decision no. 470 of April 1

2004, signed by Dan Nica, minister of Communications and Information technology, Eugen Bejinariu, minister for the coordination of the Government’s General Secretarial Offices (SGG) and Mihai Nicolae Tănăsescu, minister of Public Finances, granted to the SGG the approval to sign a contract for the acquisition of Microsoft products.

The sum for buying Microsoft licenses is huge

.The 54,5 million U.S. dollars public money that the Government pledged to expend are meant to cover licenses for 50,000 computers - much more computers than currently exist in the central public administration.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 25

More than that, since the beginning of the Iliescu-Năstase leadership, the public administration institutions bought many thousands of new computers. For example: In January 2002, the National House for Pensions and Other Social Insurance Rights bought 759 computers; in November 2002, The General Customs Directorate bought 602 computers, in November and December 2003, the National Commerce Registry Office bought 1,494 computers, the Labor Inspectorate bought 782 computers. Even the SGG bought 83 new computers several months ago.

There are two options: either these computers

were bought without necessary licenses, which means that people who performed the acquisitions are irresponsible and broke the law, or they were bought together with licenses, which means that the 50,000 licenses contract is useless and proves the authorities’ disregard of public funds.

When signing this contract, the minister

delegate for the coordination of SGG, Eugen Bejinariu, declares that closing this contract means ”a clear signal for entering into normality and legality for all Romanian institutions”. This implies as clearly as possible that up until April 15 2004, the central public administration institutions were operating illegally. The nonchalance of the statement that the central administration broke the law for 3 years is incredible.

However, our confusion increases when we

try to understand why such a big sum was paid on

Page 15: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

26 MICROSOFT

licenses. The contract between the Government and the Austrian company Fujitsu Siemens Computers GmbH refers to the basic platform – operating system, Office applications, Client Access license – that allow a workstation to access network servers, for 50,000 PCs and 1,500 servers. The contract also states that the upgrade versions of these programs will be delivered free of charge.

Let us take them one by one. Windows XP

Professional together with the MS Office complete package cost, taking a normal discount for volume licensing, about 500 USD. A license Client Access is no more than 50 USD. For 50,000 computers, the total sum rises to about 27.5 million USD. Cost of licenses for the 1.500 servers is around 1,200 USD per server, which is about 1.8 million USD in total.

Hence, for the acquisition of the licenses, the

Government should have paid at most 29.3 million USD.

When calculating the sum, we did not take

into account the existence of the strategic partnership between the Government and Microsoft, partnership that provides “special conditions” – provision that, in a good sense, stands for “important discount”.

To conclude, for a contract of at most 29.3

million USD, the Romanian Government pledged to pay 54.3 million USD from public funds. It cannot be explained economically the difference of 25 million USD (825 billion lei).

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 27

Starting from 2001, the acquisition of computers was a real passion of PSD (Social – Democrat Party) public administration officials. The manner in which institutions that should use their budget for social projects expend public funds to buy computers is shocking.

Here are just two examples: In 2003, the

Social Security Directorate of Bucharest District 2 bought 30 computers for 1,500 USD each, while a performant computer may be found at any specialized store with half this price.

The Labor Inspectorate bought, in 2001, 307

computers and 99 printers. After less than 2 years, in March 2003, the Labor Inspectorate bought 475 more computers paying about 1,200 USD per computer.

The Popular Action asks the SGG to inform

the public opinion if the computers in Romania’s public administration were operated without licenses between July 2001 and April 2004.

We also ask SGG to document the 25 million

USD difference between the market price of licenses and the public funds paid by the Romanian Government.

The Popular Action asks the Romanian

Government to explain why it was necessary to buy licenses in April 2004 when the central administration bought tens of thousands of computers since 2001.

Page 16: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

CHAPTER II How to Die with Justice on Your Side In November 2004, the management of

OMNIS GROUP discovered on the website of ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY (RSC) - at that time an insignificant company in the IT field - almost identical copies of the ISIS and ISIS.net software applications that they owned, software protected by registration into the Registry for Computer Programs within the Romanian Office for Copyright (ORDA). It is to be emphasized that one important associate of RSC LLC was Sebastian Vlădescu, former and current Minister of Finance in the Boc 4 government. In addition, it must be specified that RSC was founded in 2000, having only one employee, and in 2002 - two employees. Given the circumstances, it would be unconceivable to believe that this company had the ability to develop a technology on which OMNIS had worked for years and with dozens of employees. It is important to mention that, during that same period of reference, OMNIS GROUP had between 40-45 employees.

In addition, also in 2002, by who knows what tricks, the two employees of RSC LLC received an amount of 50.000 euro from PHARE funds for software development.

Page 17: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

30 MICROSOFT

The financing source: RO 0007.02.01 associated to the Call for Proposal CP – 1/2001 published on May 20, 2001. The project was named: Development and selling software HIS (Hospital Informational System) for medical management, creation and selling three new software products.

And one more relevant specification: In 1998,

Sebastian Teodor Gheorghe Vlădescu and several partners, including future Prime Minister Călin Popescu Tăriceanu, became associates and founded together LEADER HIGHT-TECH LLC. The next year, the company reached the substantial turnover of over nine billion ROL (562.099 euro at the time) after which no longer had any activity. Although the company still exists today, Prime Minister Tăriceanu has strangely forgotten to mention it in his statement of interests, at his investment as leader of the Romanian Government.

Back to the ISIS and ISIS.net software piracy,

let us see how this was possible. Two employees of OMNIS GROUP LLC,

Dragoş Săracu and Irinel Lupei, co-opted and trained for software development by OMNIS while they were still students, suddenly left the company for RSC LLC, sometime in 2003. Having unrestricted access to the source code of the ISIS.net system, they did not leave empty handed, but with the copy of those applications. Based on them, RSC LLC released HIPOCRATE-AMBULANłA, CARE.NET and ARES.NET applications, subsequently gaining many contracts. But first, the company entered the IT market and got to be known following the suspicious donations made to the Romanian

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 31

Intelligence Service hospital (Prof. Dr. Agrippa Ionescu) and to the Ministry of Interior hospital (Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota). These shrewd donations gave legitimacy to the company on the market, by later ensuring the success of the business. Because the investments in the software development had been minimal, respectively the recruitment of the two OMNIS GROUP employees, RSC had enough money to make such donations. In addition, this way they could also justify the successful spending of the 50,000 euro received from European funds.

The owner of OMNIS GROUP and several

specialized expertises have repeatedly proven, beyond any doubt, that the ISIS.net software application had been stolen, and that it was on this foundation that the HIPOCRATE-AMBULANłA, CARE.NET and ARES.NET applications have been developed. Up until now, inexplicably, in spite of all the undeniable evidence, the “black robes” and other state authorities have had diametrically opposed opinions. Judge Viorica Costiniu, from the Bucharest Court of Appeal, issued the decisive ruling in the matter, thus legalizing the intelligence theft. She is none other than the wife of Judge Florin Costiniu, President of the Civil and Intellectual Property Section of the High Court of Cassation and Justice of Romania, investigated for corruption in senator Cătălin Voicu`s file.

Viorica Costiniu`s decision in case no. 16.828/3/2007 is downright bizarre: "The expertise report concludes that the statements of the ORDA experts, regarding the important weight of similar program parts, are not valid. The similarities may be due to the utilization of public Microsoft .net

Page 18: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

32 MICROSOFT

technologies”. At this point, we should mention certain

details: - Viorica Costiniu has no training in the field of

copyright or other related fields. Instead, she has a spouse that is a superior judge involved in a serious corruption scandal.

- ORDA is the unique control and coordination state authority in the field of copyright.

- The expertise mentioned by the magistrate was carried out by a specialist in computers and not in computer programming and even less in copyright, which was the best option of the police authorities, chosen during the prosecution of the two defendants. Furthermore, his magnificent expertise is contradicted not only by the repeated findings of ORDA specialists, but also by the expertise of other authorities in the field, as shown in the annexes at the end of the book;

- Judge Costiniu was in no mood to take into account the evidences brought into the case by OMNIS GROUP, proving the anteriority of the ISIS.net pirated software application in relation to Microsoft Navision 3.60 software which, as the defendants argued, would have inspired them to create their own application, HIPOCRATE. The evidences also prove the originality, uniqueness, innovation and creativity features of ISIS, whose author and rightful owner OMNIS GROUP is, according to the Romanian, European and international legislation;

- In her thorough deliberation, Viorica Costiniu further noted that the similarities between the RSC LLC and the OMNIS GROUP LLC software applications are due to the fact that they are based

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 33

on an original product belonging to Microsoft – meaning Navision 3.60 – which could be accessed for free on the Internet. What the judge has not been able to notice was that ISIS.NET had been created and even recognized as the best ERP product in Europe, prior to Microsoft’s purchase of NAVISION Denmark;

- Furthermore, the four million lines of source code written by OMNIS and registered with ORDA are the result of about 5.300 months/developer work of software development between 1990 and 2003. During most of this period, RSC LLC did not even exist, after its establishment having one or two employees, its only IT specialists being the two young people trained by OMNIS GROUP and who had been recruited altogether with the ISIS.net software application. Moreover, up to Navision`s purchase from Denmark, Microsoft had not developed ERP applications. In addition, the Danes did not even participate with their application in the contest in which OMNIS won the first prize for the Best ERP in Europe, as Navision 3.60 was far from being competitive.

The Bewilderments of an Investigative Journalist, an Endangered Occupation in Romania

As special reporter at ZIUA newspaper, I have

been involved in this case since March 2005. Initially, I believed that I had to handle a minor and obvious case of intelligence theft, which would be easily labeled and condemned as such, and the guilty - punished. I was not even dreaming at that time how

Page 19: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

34 MICROSOFT

wrong I could be. For increased narration accuracy, I insert the complete article published in ZIUA, on March 7, 2005:

Software Piracy OMNIS GROUP LTD., the first private

software company in Romania, was founded in 1990. Six years later, it became the first Romanian Microsoft Certified Partner, winning many prizes at international IT competitions. In November 2004, the OMNIS GROUP management found out that the Internet site of ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY displays copies of OMNIS GROUP’s software programs ISIS and ISIS.NET, programs protected by previous registration in the Computer Programs Registry at the Romanian Copyright Office (ORDA).

The thieves are former OMNIS GROUP

employees The reproduction of the two programs under

distinct names was possible because ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY, owned by Sebastian Vladescu, former secretary of state in the Ministry of Public Finance between 1997 and 2000, employed two programmers that worked at OMNIS GROUP, Dragos Saracu and Irinel Lupei. After leaving the old job, Saracu and Lupei, which had unrestricted access to the source code of ISIS and ISIS.NET systems, have stolen the two programs. Based on this theft, the ARES.NET, CARE.NET, AMBULANTA and HIPOCRATE programs were developed and then sold to many customers. The list of customers

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 35

include approximately 20 hospitals, clinics and emergency services, the Town Hall of the 3rd District in Bucharest, Porsche Romania, Toi Toi & Dixi Romania, and others.

PHARE funds used for the theft In order to stop the illicit activity of Vladescu

and his former wife's company (he divorced her and then he married his goddaughter, former wife of deputy Boureanu), several official notifications were sent to the General Police Inspectorate of Bucharest, General Communications and Information Technology Inspectorate, Romanian Copyright Office, Ministry of Administration and Interior, Ministry of National Defense, as well as to all the customers of the pirated software. The OMNIS GROUP management also found out that “the distribution of the illegally copied program is performed by an entire network of companies controlled by Sebastian Vladescu”. These companies are SC MEDIST SA and MEDIST LTD., involved in many contracts with state institutions, based on public funds. At the same time, “ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY LTD. benefitted in 2002 by 50.000 EUR PHARE funding, for the purpose of developing and marketing three new software products for administering the medical activity in hospitals, products that were based on the copied ISIS .NET source code”. This happened under the circumstances in which ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY was founded in 2000, had only one employee in 2001 and two employees in 2002.

Page 20: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

36 MICROSOFT

A Coffee Chat To solve the case, OMNIS GROUP officials

requested to meet ORDA specialists. The meeting took place last year, on December 8 (2004 – A/N). The expert Adrian Paunescu mentioned that, in order to perform a control at the premises of ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY, he needs a mandate from the prosecutor's office. In spite of this, he went there barehanded and he did not acquire any material evidences, the visit to Vladescu’s company turning into a coffee chat. Odd enough, just one day before the so-called control, the pirated programs were deleted from the ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY Internet site. For a while, they tried to launch the idea that the just-disappeared software programs were only versions under construction, with no real value. At this moment, the Fraud Investigation Department of the Bucharest General Police Directorate came into the scene, more precisely the team composed of commissar Luigi Sima and inspector Marian Ionita, which, unlike the expert Adrian Paunescu, succeeded to collect evidences that were submitted to the Romanian Copyright Office. Following this action, the Office has to admit, on February 8 2005, that Vladescu’s company copied significant parts from OMNIS GROUP programs.

Corruption at High Levels The gravity of these actions consists of the

fact that software systems, which value is in the range of millions of EUR, were stolen using a clever

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 37

scheme planned and designed by a former (and current – A/N) high state official, with the clear complicity of other influent individuals and by using PHARE funds. The pirated products were sold to state institutions that paid for them with public money and that are today in the position to lose the right of using the stolen programs.

Statements and expertises As expected, the injured party claimed that it

had been shamelessly stolen, and the infringers claimed that they were innocent and simon-pure. Expertises, investigations and inevitable trials followed.

In the criminal cases where they were

defendants, Dragoş Săracu and Irinel Lupei claimed under oath, before the judges that, while they had been working at OMNIS GROUP (i.e. at the interface of the ISIS.NET software application), they based their work on "examples of Microsoft (MSDN) official documentation, on other examples on the Internet, and also on knowledge gained up to that moment”, inside the company that had hired them, trained them and contributed to their lifetime achievements. Săracu even stated that he had been inspired by certain well-known software applications, such as Microsoft NAVISION. Allegedly, the similarities between ISIS.net, on one hand, and HIPOCRATE-AMBULANłA, CARE.net, ARES.net on the other hand, could arise from the fact that the same Microsoft technology had been used for their creation. Technology that not only was inferior, but

Page 21: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

38 MICROSOFT

also it did not belong to the company of Bill Gates almighty, because it had not been bought yet from the Danes for $ 1.4 billion.

What the two failed to declare, in total

disregard of the truth: - Over 5.000 source code lines had been

identically copied, including the programmer`s imprint, even the grammar errors and the misspellings.

- Of the 5.267 code lines belonging to the ISIS.net software application and the 5.108 code lines belonging to AMBULANCE and ARES.net software applications that have been examined, a total of 4.119 code lines / parts of code lines are

identical. - Without the 4.119 code lines essential for

their functioning, the RSC software applications could not even exist, subsequent developments and modifications having as support the ISIS.net concept.

- At the time when OMNIS GROUP won the prize for the best European ERP product, Microsoft had not been developing such a technology.

- At the time when OMNIS registered the ISIS.net software application at ORDA – the Registry for Computer Programs - Microsoft did not have such a technology.

- Only after a few months, Microsoft purchased a Danish company for $ 1.4 billion, including the NAVISION software application. OMNIS had anteriority in the ERP area, at least on the Romanian market. Hence, it was out of the question that the defendants, accused of intellectual piracy, could create any ERP product based on

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 39

Microsoft technologies. If it happened, it was from completely other sources.

Other aspects concerning everything

presented so far, you can find in Annex 2.

Page 22: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

CHAPTER III Capo di Tutti Capi At this point, we should review the facts for a

better understanding of the fraud. We are not dealing with simple situations, easily understood by anyone; in that case, this journalistic exercise would have made no sense. When a thief steals a fowl from the householder`s yard and he is caught, things are extremely simple. The crime is proven and he is thrown behind bars for five years. In our case, things are extremely complicated and so are the implications – as they involve real money, with many zeros. A lot of money and many zeros. Moreover, as both prosecution and justice representatives do not know how to handle the situation, or do not want to create unnecessary complications for them, the concept of justice turns into an illusion.

In the first half of the year 2002, MEDIST SA,

a company controlled by the same Sebastian Vlădescu, participated at an auction organized by "Prof. Dr. Agrippa Ionescu” SRI hospital for the purchase of management software. It presented the so-called HIPOCRATE software created by RSC LLC – a company that had only one employee at that time, as an administrator, without IT competence. For reasons that are a mystery to us,

Page 23: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

42 MICROSOFT

but which should be observed by the criminal investigation authorities, the contract won by MEDIST was signed two months after the auction, while the tendered and acquired software application had not been registered with the ORDA Register of Computer Programs. Eventually, the registration in question happened only three months after the auction. What tendered MEDIST and what the SRI hospital purchased, is still a mystery.

Under the contract, Sebastian Vlădescu`s company installed for free an RTQC software for centralized integration of quality control. Then, more than a year after signing the contract, it offered free the RTQC software application for centralized recording of quality control – the Romanian version called HIPOCRATE, worth 120.000 euro excluding VAT. In conclusion, according to the allegations of the OMNIS GROUP owner, Sebastian Vlădescu and his companies sold to the SRI hospital a software they did not own. Later on, they provided the ISIS.net pirated software application instead.

Note that Agrippa Ionescu, after whom the SRI hospital was named, was the husband of the plastic surgery doctor Doina Ionescu. Widowed, she married the famous admiral Emil Dumitrescu a.k.a. Cico, also retaining her previous name. Doina Dumitrescu-Ionescu was involved in the unexplained death of a patient who died after an operation for the removal of facial wrinkles. The case was hushed up, and the doctor is still unpunished.

Although it had only two employees (and we

insist on this aspect), one of whom was an administrator with no IT skills, on November 12, 2002, RSC LLC signed a sponsorship contract with

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 43

“Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota” Foundation regarding the HIPOCRATE 1.0 software application, based on the TELEPATH software application created by an Irish company. HIPOCRATE 1.0, HIPOCRATE and later on HIPOCRATE 2.0 are far from being the same, as RSC representatives would like us to believe.

This time, the sponsorship was of 178,500 USD including VAT and coincided with the employment of Dragoş Săracu at RCS LLC.

Founded in 1998, the "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie

Gerota" Foundation – a so-called nongovernmental organization - has actually activated and it still does under the umbrella of the MAI hospital with the same name, part of the necessary funds being obtained from this relationship, with the complicity of the Ministry and MAI`s Health Division.

By September 2002, RSC had registered with ORDA the HIPOCRATE 1.0 software application, as a condition required by MAI for the donation to be accepted.

All of a sudden, in the documents, the foundation was replaced by the MAI hospital having the same name, "Dimitrie Gerota”. The HIPOCRATE 1.0 informational system was valued at 178,500 USD, including VAT. Its use: "The informational system offered as sponsorship is meant for activity and management tracking across the whole hospital."

Only that the foundation did not, nor does it have, any hospital. This proves that, in fact, the disguised donation was made to Gerota Hospital and not to the foundation having the same name. Furthermore, the donated information system was granted only after Dragoş Săracu became manager

Page 24: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

44 MICROSOFT

at RSC, in February 2003. At about the same time, the MAI Directorate for Communications and Informatics notified Gerota Hospital that the software "meets the requirements”.

Because the donation or sponsorship

scenario - call it as you please - raised too many suspicions of corruption, the business’s puppeteers found a new way to make it relatively legal. “Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota” Foundation expressed its intention to freely donate the HIPOCRATE informational system to the hospital having the same name (see Annex 3). We will leave aside the fact that even donating a donation is very likely an obscure practice. In fact, allegedly, the Ministry of Interior had not received a sponsorship from a limited liability company controlled by Sebastian Vlădescu, but from a non-profit and non-governmental foundation. Sounds nice, isn`t it?

In danger of being discovered, the hospital`s manager at the time, Chief Commissioner Viorel Roşu (later retired on request) tried to cover up his involvement in this dirty business. He addressed the General Directorate of Information and Internal Security (DGIPI) within the Ministry, former famous Military Unit “Doi ş-un sfert” (UM 0215, "a quarter past two"), requesting the necessary approval for the acceptance of the donation. Approval that was quickly issued by the head of the unit itself, the well-known police officer Virgil Ardelean a.k.a. the Fox.

Equally interesting in this equation with a lot of unknowns is the fact that eight months later after DGIPI`s approval, the RSC LLC representatives required the Gerota Hospital to sign a maintenance contract for the system they had received as a gift,

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 45

the monthly payment being set at 125.9 million ROL, including VAT. That means no less than 3,350 euro per month. Thus, good money started to come from the donation in question, following the backstage maneuvers so painstakingly undertaken. Maybe even some VAT refunds.

IT Pirates` Accomplices In late 2004, when OMNIS GROUP LLC

found out that a competitor had stolen from them more than 5,000 code sources and made a few changes selling them as their own software products registered with ORDA, RSC LLC had already concluded contracts with many beneficiaries. About 20 hospitals, clinics and ambulance services, Liviu NegoiŃă`s 3rd district City Hall, Porsche Romania, Toi Toi & Dixi Romania and other companies, even a military unit, concluded such contracts.

OMNIS notified all contractors to stop using RSC products because they had been pirated; they filed a criminal complaint against RSC and claimed intellectual theft to the Bucharest General Police Inspectorate, the General Inspectorate for Communication and Information Technology, ORDA, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of National Defense. As expected, no contracting party complies with the notification to stop using the pirated software, all of them being convinced that no control will ever be allowed upon them.

*

Page 25: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

46 MICROSOFT

Meanwhile, there have been and there still are many criminal cases on this matter, either at the Prosecutor`s Office within Bucharest Court, or at the National Anticorruption Directorate. None of them has been so far resolved with an arraignment. It`s easy to guess why some cases are among the few older than two years, which still lie at the DNA. The only exception is the case "solved" by Viorica Costiniu - today challenged in the Constitutional Court - on the grounds that the honorable magistrate dismissed the legal expertise of ORDA (the only state institution authorized in the field of copyright and related rights), which has broken the legal right of defense of OMNIS GROUP LLC.

The case of the software piracy, which also

implies - as shown - European funds, reached the attention of OLAF (European Anti-Fraud Office) in Brussels, passing by Jonathan Scheele, former head of the European Commission Delegation to Romania. OLAF is an institution with a budget of over five billion EUR per year, which both monitors the legal spending of European money and the illegal traffic of products such as drugs, cigarettes, counterfeit media (CD and DVD) etc.. In turn, OLAF has been repeatedly accused of unnecessarily wasting European money, since the results in the fight against fraud are insignificant. Note that OLAF suspiciously quieted the case, by not reacting in any way to the allegations made by OMNIS GROUP.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 47

Who is OLAF and What Does it Want The only notable success of this European

authority was to hunt out some cases of high-level corruption, which later led to the resignation of the Head of an European Commission. Otherwise, the expertise of OLAF is limited to assisting Prosecutor’s Offices in EU countries so that, after solving the cases, they are reported as big successes in the fight against cross-border crime.

In February 2007, along with four other colleagues from ZIUA daily, I attended a one-week pilot training at the OLAF headquarters in Brussels. How was this opening possible for Romania? Several Members of the European Parliament have complained that OLAF, established to hunt out European money leak, is merely but a secret organization that does almost nothing and carelessly spends many funds. After they presented us organization charts, graphs and statistics, curious by nature, we have asked for some examples. They presented the case of a Portuguese parliamentary, I believe, who had tried to get a 4 percent commission from the financing of a wastewater treatment plant in Ukraine. Very nice. We have insisted and they have presented the case of another Member of Parliament’s concubine, who settled a pharmacy prescription on behalf of him, but the purchase was for her. The prejudice: the fabulous amount of 24,5 euro. We burst out laughing. Realizing the ridiculous of the situation, the OLAF people started to beat around the bush trying to convince us that not the amount is important, but the fact itself. Of course, how else?!

Page 26: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

48 MICROSOFT

I later on asked about what would be the competences of the OLAF representatives, since they cannot engage in international investigations but only under the patronage of Prosecutor`s Offices and prosecution authorities in those countries. Well, we check papers, engage in actions and interview the persons involved, if they allow us to - they answered. That is about what we also do in Romania, but as investigative journalists, one of us reacted. Then we put it down on paper. Since the reaction that we got from the OLAF people was not the most cheerful one, we left it that way. Especially as we were promised a luxury lunch at their own restaurant.

The Thief Shouts “Thieves!” Encouraged by the magistrates` delays, the

RSC LLC representatives were not afraid to sue OMNIS GROUP for alleged image damage. Thus, the plaintiff has become defendant because it dared to seek justice with the Romanian law. It is the moment when RSC LLC received an unexpected support from Microsoft Company itself. More specifically, IonuŃ Lopătan, technical director and founding member of Microsoft Romania, signed a protocol as RSC-side expert, stating among others that the ISIS.net application belonging to OMNIS Group LLC is not original, having Microsoft’s Navision as source of inspiration. This was a blatant lie. We note again that ISIS.net had precedence over Navision, being registered with ORDA before Microsoft bought the Danish company and took possession of that application, which they later on

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 49

marketed in Romania. But who could be interested in such minor details?!

And another interesting fact: Chief commissioner Corina Artopolescu, wife of Ovidiu Artopolescu, general manager of Microsoft Romania, was also in the team of the Ministry of Interior, that accepted the donation from RSC LLC. Investigated in the criminal case no. 200187/2007, the lady refused to give any statement to IonuŃ Cram, the judicial colleague handling the case, arguing that she was not involved in checking the technical aspects of the application donated by RSC LLC and that she was not part of the Ministry`s Certification, Accreditation and Supervision Commission.

Mrs. Artopolescu shamelessly lied the judicial colleagues` investigative bodies, as it can easily be noticed in Annex 3’. Similarly to the 20 years lie about the respectably obtained certificate stating her status of revolutionary in the December 1989 overcrowding.

* During the liberal government of 2006, the

RSC businesses have grown, the company reaching 44 employees. In spring, the Minister of Health at that time, Eugen Nicolăescu – the Press used to call him "Minister of Death" - dismissed on political grounds 23 boards and 15 executives from several hospitals. Then, by Minister Order, he ordered all hospital units in the country to acquire the HIPOCRATE software application, pirated from OMNIS GROUP by RSC. In this manner, Nicolăescu played by the rules and interests of his friend Vlădescu, filling his accounts.

Page 27: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

50 MICROSOFT

With the intent on putting pressure because of

the press disclosures that I published in the ZIUA daily, Minister Nicolăescu filed a criminal complaint both against me and against the newspaper for which I worked, thinking that even if I did not end up behind bars, at least I would cease to continue with my journalistic approach, revealing the theft. That did not happen, especially since I was acquitted – innocent, based on the evidence in the file. That was not all.

How to Silence an Inconvenient Journalist

Unlike the "Minister of Death", the RSC LLC

representatives did not file a criminal complaint against me and the newspaper for which I worked, and only filed a complaint with the Romanian Press Club (CRP), after the editorial office had refused their right of reply. Only later was I to know why they have acted that way.

In a criminal case, that would have become written evidence on the intelligence theft, in addition to those hushed up by the criminal investigation authorities, i.e. the Police, the Prosecutor`s Office and DNA. In addition, a possible acquittal would have been the equivalent of me being right in my journalistic approach. Therefore, there would have been a dangerous precedent in exposing the piracy committed by RSC LLC, through a court decision. The risk was too great, and my opponents did not wish to see me behind bars. They only wanted to silence me. On the other hand, they feared ZIUA

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 51

newspaper, at that time led by Sorin Roşca Stănescu, and they certainly had no intention to litigate with him or to step on his toe.

For all these reasons, a complaint sent to the Romanian Press Club was a much better solution, especially since they had not received the requested right of reply. This way, I could have been more easily silenced, which, however, did not happen.

As for the reason why the ZIUA editorial office did not publish the right of reply, things are extremely simple. Elisei Crăciun, RSC manager, wrote this mockingly (See Annex 4).

The RSC LLC complaint to the Romanian

Press Club, which is based on breach of the Journalist`s Code of Ethics, can be read in Annex 5.

* It is time for me to make a specification: The CRP was established as an employers'

organization to protect the rights of journalists and to ensure compliance with a code of ethics established for that purpose. However, nobody has considered the way employers should respect the rights of the employees. ZIUA daily was a founding member of the CRP and a Honorary Board member, but did not interfere in this dispute.

I did not even attend my case "hearing", considering that it would be a stupidity to account to a body that I did not acknowledge. Instead, I prepared the evidence necessary for my defense and let myself represented by a colleague. Why did I not acknowledge CRP and, even less, the code of

Page 28: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

52 MICROSOFT

ethics drafted by that body? For it did represent the employers, not the employees. Why did I sign that code? I signed it forced to do so, as a condition to get a job in the editorial office of ZIUA. Subsequently, a few journalists broke away from the CRP and founded the Romanian Association of Journalists, this time to represent the employees, not the employers, and to draft a different code of ethics. This was a better thing.

* Cristian Tudor Popescu and Mihai Tatulici

were part of the Council of Honour that "judged" me. The first, director of the newspaper Gândul, was extremely familiar with the subject as subordinate journalists had also studied the software piracy and Sebastian Vlădescu`s involvement in the matter. The second, owner of "Privirea" magazine, had published articles about this case. In addition, he has known me very well since 1991 when, as a journalist at “România Liberă”, I attended one of his TV shows on press freedom, “VeniŃi cu noi pe programul 2” ("Follow us on Channel 2”). They both knew that I usually did not write nonsense; therefore, they debated only on the refusal of the publication of the right of reply, and not on the solidity of the facts that I had published. They concluded that the reply of RSC LLC was nothing but a mockery of bad taste. Therefore, they issued “Resolution 28/2007 concerning a complaint submitted by ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY”:

The Council of Honor, examining the referral

submitted by Romanian Soft Company against ZIUA

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 53

daily, in the presence of both the plaintiffs` representatives and those of the defendant newspaper, decides to send a letter to Romanian Soft Company by which they are advised to send a right of reply to ZIUA daily. This has to be specific, of a reasonable length and subject (underlined by us), based on Article 5 of the Journalist`s Code of Ethics adopted by the CRP.

In addition, the Council of Honor will send a letter addressed to the management of ZIUA daily, by which it will recommend the publication of Romanian Soft Company`s altered right of reply.

RSC LLC did not send any professional, well

documented right of reply to ZIUA, their attempt to silence us failing miserably. If they had done it, we could have proven with written evidence every possible lie in its content, which was not something the plaintiffs` leaders would have wished.

Note. Declaring himself as a Liberal and later on

denying that political affiliation, Sebastian Vlădescu has been for a long time Secretary of State or Minister of Finance. Today, under the governance of the Liberal-Democrats and the Democratic Union of Hungarians, shareholder or business associate in over 10 (ten) companies, he still holds the position of skilled Minister of Finance. So skilled, that he supports the reduction of retirement pensions, maternity and unemployment allowances, as a method to get the country out of the crisis.

Page 29: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

CHAPTER IV Copyrights Violated on a Daily Basis I am coming back now. On paper, Sebastian Vlădescu, former and

current Minister of Finance, would no longer be a member of the Liberal Party since 2000, since when he has not paid the membership fee. Verbally, Eugen Nicolăescu (former Minister of Health) has stated a few times that he is not his friend, quite the contrary. We will see below that things are exactly the opposite.

Like I said, the HIPOCRATE system was implemented under order in many hospitals, filling RCS`s accounts and increasing its turnover. After the SRI and MAI hospitals, the county hospitals from Piteşti, Timişoara, Iaşi, St. Ioan hospital in Bucharest and many others have followed. Interestingly enough, the pirated software has been and it is still running improperly, giving strong headaches to all its users, as the RSC experts have tried to change the code lines pirated from OMNIS, but their attempts have been unsuccessful.

We hereby mention only a few deficiencies claimed by Piteşti County Hospital: the software application does not ensure confidentiality concerning all health care-related information, circumvents the legislation in the field, does not

Page 30: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

56 MICROSOFT

cover the specific IT requirements, it does not meet the requirement of a judicious management of sanitary and maintenance materials, of printed documents, fuel, spare parts, ignoring even communication with the Specialized Ambulatory, and many other aspects observed by users, but quieted by hospital managers interested to hold on their positions gained on political criteria.

Illustrative in this regard is the undercover

journalistic investigation conducted by the author, at the Piteşti hospital, in 2007. I managed to get into the hospital's computer system without difficulty. I accessed the HIPOCRATE application in the easiest way possible, by breaking the access code, and then altered some patients’ data at will. Thus, I changed the data so that a 92-year-old woman was in the third month of pregnancy. I named her parents George and Traian. In addition, I diagnosed her as suffering from syphilis, also introducing in the system other aberrant data, which I then printed out. The funny thing is that no one cared about my intervention until ZIUA daily, where I worked as an investigative journalist at the time, published an article in this respect. Thus, I have proven beyond doubt that the HIPOCRATE application does not ensure by far patient confidentiality, as stipulated by the strict national regulations and European directives.

* By early February 2007, multibillionaire Bill

Gates, the owner of Microsoft Company, visited Romania and President Traian Băsescu decorated

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 57

him for his philanthropic actions and activities undertaken for the development of science. The American was awarded the “Romania's Star in rank of Commander" distinction and, at the same time, he formally launched in our country the new Windows Vista operating system, called "the most secure operating system" produced by the company.

* Before our country's integration into the

European Union, Romania has long had the fields of copyright, intellectual property and related rights red-flagged. After the Parliament issued several laws and the structures of the state bodies with responsibilities in these areas have been completed, the Head of the European Commission Delegation, Jonathan Scheele, removed the red flag and went home satisfied after receiving the title of doctor honoris causa of the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest.

Under new legislative regulations, the OMNIS GROUP representatives claimed in 2005, for almost two years, that ORDA must perform an expertise on the authenticity of ISIS.net application, in order to prove that the programs marketed by RSC LLC were based on significant parts copied from it. ORDA held this competence, as long as the expertise was to be paid by the interested party. However, that provision could not be implemented in the absence of the methodological norms setting the fees. As a strange coincidence, the Ministry of Finance was the entity called to establish these fees. Something that proved impossible in that period, during which Sebastian Vlădescu was either secretary of state or

Page 31: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

58 MICROSOFT

relevant minister, him being directly concerned that RSC LLC, the company he was controlling, could not be proven to have stolen any software from OMNIS.

* In November 2008, instead of the

Government`s General Secretariat, the executive authorized the Ministry of Communications and Information Society (MCSI) to acquire new licenses in the following year after the strategic 0115RO agreement signed with Microsoft in 2004 expired. This time it was necessary to organize an auction so that the public opinion did not point fingers at the company. However, as was expected, the framework agreement was won by the same company, the tender book drawn up by the representatives of the Ministry perfectly matching Microsoft’s offer.

Gabriel Sandu, MCSI Minister, even gave unequivocal explanations on that situation. "We had a force majeure situation. On April 26th (2009 – A/N) absolutely all licenses were about to expire and we also had a specific request in this respect from the Ministry of Administration and Interior and from the Ministry of National Defense because we were in the position not to be able to function anymore within the Romanian Government. As long as from a number of 15,000 institutions 14,900 are working with the same system, we cannot remove it until we come up with something instead. We will not spoil something that works, we have to ensure continuity, and this cannot be achieved overnight", Sandu also argued. In conclusion, for the period between 2009 and 2012, Bill Gates's corporation has obtained yet another contract worth about 100 million EUR.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 59

In a free translation, the minister acknowledged that only Microsoft, our country's Guardian Angel in IT, could win the tender. The decision was widely criticized by other competitors, but with no result.

The address received by the Ministry from the Competition Council is yet another proof that MCSI has not acted quite properly once again awarding the contract to Microsoft. It draws attention on the fact that, in the following years, proper conditions have to be achieved for the use of open-source solutions, so that the Romanian Government is able to connect to any operator.

Mail Manipulation The business owner whose software was

pirated claims that even the postal office would have utterly prejudiced him by the improper, malicious handling of the mail. At a first glance, it is hard to believe it, but the charges in question are as serious as possible, as proven by official documents. Here are some examples:

In late 2009, the representatives of OMNIS

GROUP sent a letter to Microsoft in which they challenged the fact that the ISIS.net application would have been inspired by Navision. The strengths of the argumentation were two: (i) ISIS.net had been awarded by Microsoft itself the first prize for the best ERP product in Europe, by the time when Navision was virtually non-existent and the manufacturing company had not yet been bought by the U.S. giant, and (ii) ISIS.net had been legally registered with

Page 32: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

60 MICROSOFT

ORDA, according to the Romanian and European legislation to which Romania acceded to. The documentation was sent through the well-known DHL mailing service, which was quite expensive. Outrageously enough, after a certain period of time, OMNIS GROUP learned that the letter had not reached its destination, because the address was considered unknown on the US territory.

To return the correspondence, the sender is required to pay additional money. However, not even until today, even after the payment was done, the letter has strangely never returned to where it was sent out from.

Meanwhile, on its own expense, OMNIS called on ORDA to compare the ISIS.net and Navision applications, the latter being marketed in our country since May 2003.

THE EXPERTISE OF THE SOURCE CODE

OF ISIS.NET – EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY OF THE SUBSCRIBED AND NAVISION 3.60 - PROPERTY OF MICROSOFT, DISTRIBUTED IN ROMANIA BY EWIR-EAST WEST INFORMATIQUE ROUMANIE.

ORDA addressed Microsoft Romania the

following address, submitted to the attention of Călin Tatomir, CEO of Microsoft Romania:

Please note that according to Law. 8 / 1996

article 138 paragraph (1), letter k. on Copyright and Related Rights, as amended and supplemented, ORDA is empowered to undertake surveys on-demand for a fee, at the expense of the interested parties.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 61

As at present ORDA has received such a request - to conduct an extrajudicial survey to compare the ISIS.net software application belonging to OMNIS GROUP LLC and Navision 3.60 belonging to Microsoft - please analyze the possibility of providing ORDA the above-mentioned software application, in a format that allows including the comparison of source codes.

Answer from Microsoft Romania In answer to your request of July 30 2009, we

hereby inform you that Microsoft Romania does not own the copyrights of the Navision software. More than that, as you are surely aware, the software products are the main and most valuable goods of Microsoft and therefore we are unable, in all circumstances, except if required by a Court of Law under a judicial procedure, to provide to third parties the source code of our products.

We are confident that you will correctly understand our position and we remain at your disposal for any additional information you might need on this subject.

In this situation, ORDA addressed to Microsoft Corporation in USA to solve the problem, but this correspondence might also mysteriously disappear.

* Four years before those mentioned above,

more precisely in October 2005, OMNIS GROUP addressed Bucharest District 1 Court with a “Proof Insurance Demand” at Emergency Military Hospital

Page 33: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

62 MICROSOFT

"Prof. Dr. Agrippa Ionescu”, which had no right to use the ISIS.net software application. According to the law, it was demanded:

Appointment of an expert approved by the

Ministry of Justice, with specialty in computer equipment, who will conduct the collection and preservation of evidence consisting of ARES.net, CARE.net, AMBULANCE.net and HIPOCRATE software applications, provided to the defendant by ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY, directly or through MEDIST Inc., applications containing significant parts copied from ISIS.net software application created by OMNIS GROUP.

As specified by the plaintiff, the hospital`s

mailing address was 7, Arh. Mincu Street, district 1, Bucharest.

In the Council Board meeting of October 28

2005, Bucharest District 1 Court subpoenaed the parties through the Romanian Post. Unlike the SRI hospital representatives, those of OMNIS GROUP showed in court. As absence justification, the Romanian Post returned the summons with the mention "recipient moved from the address”.

The hospital has been functioning at the mentioned address for decades, across the College of Informatics, and has not moved even today, in 2010. If mail manipulation would have been based on another justification (even far-fetched), as for example "address unknown" (because the plaintiff forgot to mention the first name of the architect, “Ion”), so be it. But like this ... Despite the obvious, the magistrates demanded the applicant "to carry out

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 63

the due diligence required to indicate the current address of the defendant, or to prove that the address is the indicated one”. As a result, photos of the SRI hospital from all angles have been taken and forwarded to the justice. But what was to expect from a blind justice to see in those pictures?...

* OMNIS Group LLC claimed another ordinary

manipulation of the Romanian Post in January 2006. This is what happened.

On June 22, 2005, D.G.P.M.B. (the General

Directorate of Bucharest Police – A/N) – the Criminal Prosecution Service sent address no. 242863/13.06.2005 by the Romanian Post. The address convened OMNIS Group LLC to the Police headquarters on June 28, 2005, 10:00 a.m., to receive notification that a legal technical expertise had been ordered in the case where they represented one of the parties.

Because Ion Neagu, mail carrier at Post

Office no.1, has not delivered, on signature, this registered notification, OMNIS GROUP could not prepare a defense by naming a side-expert.

Following this situation, a disciplinary investigation was conducted, and the following conclusions have been reached:

- The Police sent registered letter no. 34 502, addressed to OMNIS GROUP, on June 22 2005.

- The acknowledgement of receipt took two days to reach a post office within the same city, being distributed to the defendant Ion Neagu.

Page 34: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

64 MICROSOFT

- Ion Neagu did not bother to seek out the recipient of the registered letter and to hand it over on signature – according to his duties – but instead he abandoned it in a mailbox and signed the false receipt.

- Under criminal investigation for service negligence, falsification of authentic documents, forged writing by false signature and use of forgery, the defendant justified his actions and inactions by the fact that what happened was a mistake. One that was due to the large volume of mail received that day by the plaintiff OMNIS Group LLC and to an innocent human error. However, that did not prevent mail carrier Ion Neagu from signing in false instead of the addressee, so that the papers seemed right, as if he would have perfectly met his job assignments.

- Compassionate, the prosecutors suggested dropping the charges against the defendant and the Romanian Post sanctioned Ion Neagu – just to show up - "with a reduction of 10 percent of the base salary for a period of one month”.

- However, following the insistences of the OMNIS GROUP representatives, First Deputy Prosecutor Iulian Crăciunescu from the District 2 Court Prosecutor's Office has ordered - based on the evidence provided by the plaintiff and the damage suffered - the reopening of the criminal proceedings against the mail carrier.

- The file was returned to the employees of Bucharest Police Department No.6 in order to once again conduct a criminal prosecution trusting that, this time, they would do their job for which they are paid from public money.

CHAPTER V Shameless Ministerial Lies During August-December 2009, I was an

investigation editor at the Cotidianul daily, which, in the meantime, has been closed down. In my attempt to untangle the details of the business between the Romanian Government and Microsoft, I addressed a request for information to MCSI regarding the two contracts signed in 2004 and in 2009. This initiative was based on Law no. 544/2001 on free access to public information.

At the maximum period of ten days since the submission of the request, I contacted the ministry`s press office and asked about the reason why I was not given any answer. Silence again. I submitted a new request, this time directly addressed to Minister Gabriel Sandu`s Cabinet, in which I criticized the unlawful attitude of the press office, which has refused to act on my request. Eventually, I could contact the press office employees, but it was only after I had entered the ministry "undercover", using a different identity. To my outrage, I have learned how incompetent - and therefore useless - this department was. A missy working there shrugged her shoulders in confusion, expressing in that way that her hands and feet are tied – beautiful legs, indeed. Eventually, we have found a solution – or so it

Page 35: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

66 MICROSOFT

seemed at first. That was to get directly in touch with the IT manager, Andrei Săvulescu. And so I did.

The first discussion between us was hallucinating. I reproduce from memory:

"- I cannot help you as it concerns the strategic contract 0015RO because I was not working here at that time.

- But who could help me? - ?!... - It is you who coordinates this department,

isn’t it? - Yes, it is I, but I have to make some research

and see what was signed then and it takes time. - Very well, I will be waiting with great interest.

When should I call you again? - Call me in two or three days. I can assure

you that I will finish by then." One week passed, and then I called again.

Săvulescu has made an unwavering promise that within two days the problem would have been solved, and that they were dealing with it.

Another week passed, and then the MCSI IT manager once again lied in our face: "I will send the response tomorrow." Our “deaf-dialogue” continued this way for about two months.

I originally wanted to call the ministry to court, exercising my rights under the law. I gave up, thinking that if I won the case, the ministry would pay for the moral damages - a ministry also financed from my own taxpayer pocket, with all the contributions paid to date. Maybe I should have filed a criminal complaint against lying manager Andrei Săvulescu for service abuse something similar, but meanwhile I became disgusted and therefore I

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 67

abandoned the approach. The True Face of Microsoft Multibillionaire Gates` company succeeded to

gain control in record time over 90 percent of the whole world`s PC market. How could such a development be possible? The U.S. government has discovered how it happened and it has characterized the methods used by Microsoft as international high-tech terrorism.

For a deeper understanding of the charges,

we will give you the definition of the term derived from the French language:

TERRORISM a) All acts of violence perpetrated by a group

or organization to create a climate of insecurity, or to change their form of government of a state.

b) Terrorist attitude, event. c) Use of systematic measures of violence

and intimidation to achieve a political purpose. d) All acts of violence committed by an

organization or a reactionary political regime. e) System of terrorist actions. f) Deliberate and systematic use of violent

means or threats intent to cause fear and mistrust, panic and uncertainty by ignoring all humanitarian norms.

The unscrupulous rise of the IT colossus has

left many "bodies" behind, companies such as Netscape Communications, Lotus, WordPerfect,

Page 36: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

68 MICROSOFT

Novell, and IBM itself. During 1994 – 1998, Bill Gates had become

such a powerful person, that he considered himself at least as powerful as the U.S. president. At a party among friends, while they were discussing the election of William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton as head of the country, Gates said: "I have as much power as the President has."

Convinced that he is the most intelligent character among all the enlightened minds at Microsoft, Gates can never stand the mistakes of others. Microsoft employees even believe that, if during a conversation with him, he does not pronounce you idiot for 99 times, you have gained a major victory.

In early 1994, the IT "genius” devised a diabolical plan to destroy competing company Netscape Communications. In a memo sent to his employees, he indicated that Netscape (which owned a reputed Internet web browser) had to be "matched and beaten". The fight against this competitor determined the U.S. government to conclude that Bill Gates is not a hero, but a high-tech terrorist. The American executive accused Microsoft that it has used the monopoly of Windows to initiate a wide range of engaging and exclusionary practices of the competitors from the business. Specifically, the company has acted in such a way that consumers could not access the Netscape products anymore, thus killing in the bud any initiative of the startup companies trying to enter the IT market.

At the beginning of this millennium, the one who thought of himself as being as powerful as the President was accused by the U.S. Justice of

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 69

terrorist practices, thus bringing into discussion even Microsoft's future. During the hearings, the richest man in the world had a passive-aggressive attitude, deliberately causing confusion, and often behaving like a child. Gates refused to admit the evil strategy planned for the destruction of Netscape, but the Court has presented an overwhelming evidence of his guilt. By an e-mail to employees, he stated: “Microsoft should buy part of Netscape, which I want very much to happen".

In 2000, the federal judge found Gates guilty as charged and indicated that Microsoft must be divided in two separate companies. This decision resulted in an overnight drop in share price of 30 billion USD for Microsoft. A situation that led to the billionaire bursting into tears during a meeting with the corporate management. Subsequently, the Court of Appeal upheld that Microsoft had systematically violated U.S. laws, particularly anti-trust laws, but found that breaking the company in two would be too harsh a measure.

Following this scandal, which resulted in Gates being convicted, but exempted from punishment, he was forced to step down as CEO and to hand over the reins to Steve Ballmer.

If in the past, Microsoft has made companies like IBM look old and cumbersome, today Microsoft is receiving the same treatment by IT giants like Google.

All around the world, the issues of Microsoft are far from being over. The European Union has imposed a fine of nearly one billion dollars for anti-competitive practices, with the obligation to align with the EU rules if Microsoft still wants to operate in this market. Microsoft is facing similar situations in the

Page 37: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

70 MICROSOFT

Asian region. Certainly, when you have an annual turnover

of 34 billion dollars, a fine of one billion is nothing but a trifle. As long as the pitcher still goes to the water. A pitcher that, for the time being, may not break in Romania.

And another interesting detail: most of the world`s largest companies have been and still are reluctant to invest in our country because of the extremely high level of corruption. Those who try are doing it through intermediary companies, in order to reduce the risks that they would be exposed to at a certain time. Promoted by the Adrian Năstase - Dan Nica regime, Microsoft has never had such issues in this respect. Had Microsoft have not information on the harmful scourge that grinds Romania? Had Microsoft not to deal with the widespread corruption in our country? It is hard to believe that. This proves that either it has adapted to the system or maybe it does not care.

A Stolen Property Based on False Documents

and a Suspicious Death. So Far, no Offender In 2006, I have started making a series of

disclosures, which, in the beginning, seemed more like scenes from a science fiction movie to me. The owner of OMNIS GROUP LLC complained to me that after he had been the victim of two attempts on his life, a house that had been legally bought by him and owned for few years was fraudulently removed from his property. The crushing documents which proved this accusation were irrefutable, and after I had checked them, I wrote a first article on the matter. The article had not been published for a

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 71

week when I asked chief editor Adrian Pătruşcă what was the reason for that. Man of good faith, he could not understand how can a house that you owned be stolen from you, based on false documents. In addition to that, even proven counterfeit. I explained that to him, and the article published on the front page under the title "The network of the dying" was a delight in those times.

In short, the owner of OMNIS GROUP had bought a house in a residential area of Bucharest, by bank payment instruments, paid taxes for several years, and then learned that he was not its owner anymore. Figures, by a Romanian citizen that he had mandated in the U.S., he allegedly sold the house in his name to a certain surgeon, Chief Commissioner Adrian Murea, from "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota” Hospital of the Ministry of Interior.

Now a series of mysteries follows: - The owner did not ever intend to sell his

house. - The trustee has not ever been abroad,

where the transaction has supposedly been concluded between him and the real owner of the house, and he has never held any passport.

- On the date when the sale contract was signed, the retired trustee was non-transportable and under the influence of morphine, suffering from the final stage of metastasis, and being the patient of Dr. Adrian Murea - aka Dr. Death - from “Gerota” Hospital.

- The hospital in question has been using and it still does, without any rights to do so, the software provided by RSC LLC and pirated from OMNIS GROUP.

- For several years, Murea had been in a

Page 38: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

72 MICROSOFT

relationship with Emil Dumitrescu`s (aka Cico) daughter and was good friend with Senator General Cătălin Voicu, recently detained in custody.

- All the forged sale and purchase documents have been classified as such by the specialized state institutions, but despite this, the file has not been sent so far to any court, after almost five years. For several years, a DNA prosecutor has been working on the case, but we will not disclose his name.

- The dying man, whose identity has been used for stealing a house, is not the only case linked to Dr. Death. There is a similar one, also concerning Cico Dumitrescu`s wife, named Doina Ionescu-Dumitrescu. Murea has again used forged property documents, by involving another dying person, in order to open a private clinic together with Cico`s wife.

- Both so-called trustees, who supposedly have sold luxury properties to Murea, died at exactly two weeks after the signing of the contracts.

- The notary who falsified the sale and purchase documents, named Livia Alexandrescu, cannot be prosecuted because the Superior Council of Magistracy has not consented to it.

- In order to declare Adrian Murea innocent in this fraud case, prosecutor Alexandra Şinc severed his cause because it could not be exactly determined who had falsified the documents. It did not matter to her that Dr. Death, and none other, was the beneficiary of these forges. It is as if a man is caught driving a stolen car, but cannot be prosecuted because you cannot determine who stole the car. Or that someone else has fake bank cards on him, but we don’t know who counterfeited them.

- The leaders of the Romanian General

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 73

Prosecutor`s Office consider that the delay in resolving the case, along with that of the intelligence theft, is justified due to case complexity. In our opinion, the justification is ... not justified at all and it would not be impossible that this story also involves leading exponents of the criminal group coordinated by Senator Voicu.

Following "Doctor Death" article published in

ZIUA on August 31, 2006, the MAI Department of Public Communication sent us a document containing some untrue specifications, and which was signed - how else? - unreadable (see Annex 7). Thus, we were informed that the surgeon "has not deviated from professional ethics, carrying out his assignments under the internal rules in force”. Especially since "the Prosecutor's Office within the High Court of Cassation and Justice and the Prosecutor's Office within Bucharest Court have conducted researches and ordered the release from criminal prosecution and, respectively, to drop the criminal charges."

Dissatisfied with this false attitude, which the Public Communication Department has been authorized to demonstrate, I replied with a legal information request addressed to the Minister of Interior, with the illusion that we would get to the truth that we knew and that we could prove with tens of documents, most of them official. Something that has not happened but instead, I received a letter from the service in question, signed by the same person ... unreadable, pointing out that we have already received an answer on the same topic; and that the General Directorate for Control of MAI has also investigated Dr. Death, who could not be

Page 39: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

74 MICROSOFT

incriminated with anything. In conclusion, Adrian Murea, who has been

purchasing property from his dying patients, acting as his false trustees, was simon-pure. Then, how is it possible that a DNA prosecutor is still investigating today a huge criminal file case whose main topic is Dr. Death and the second one, his accomplices? Could it be possible that the employees of the Ministry of Interior are unaware of what it is in fact happening? It is highly unlikely. It was rather an attempt to cover up the truth and to protect Murea, by misleading the media.

You can find details regarding Dr. Death`s

entire criminal fraud in the articles of Annex 6.

CHAPTER VI

Microsoft in Quotations During the five years that I have spent

documenting the subject of this book and publishing numerous articles, I gathered a pile of documentation of almost four meters high in support of the claims that have been made. Among them, the positive opinion of the Romanian state authorities on the Microsoft phenomenon stands out, but so do the important voices, which argue that the IT giant would not be quite an innocent angel, as many would be inclined to believe at first sight. On the contrary. This is why I will dwell on some of the opinions - which may cause the reader to do some thinking on the company's practices over the past years.

Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Microsystems SUA,

currently part of Oracle Corporation (that accused Microsoft of monopolistic practices and won the trial):

“When Steve Ballmer calls me wacko, I

consider that a compliment.” “The only thing that I'd rather own than

Windows is English, because then I could charge

Page 40: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

76 MICROSOFT

you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it.”

"Shut down some of the bullshit the

government is spending money on and use it to buy all the Microsoft stock. Then put all their intellectual property in the public domain. Free Windows for everyone! Then we could just bronze Gates, turn him into a statue and stick him in front of the Commerce Department."

"Microsoft is now talking about the digital

nervous system... I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their technology too.”

“W2K (Windows 2000) will be a bigger

disaster than Y2K.” “A giant hairball." [About Windows NT] “The Evil Empire." [guess who] “The beast from Redmond." [yup] "Try moving off NT easily. You can move from

Solaris to HP/UX to AIX or DEC easily relative to moving off NT, which is like a Roach Motel. Once you check in, you never check out. "

"With Microsoft the first hit is always free -

remember that all your life." "I am convinced that if General Motors could

eliminate [Microsoft] Office from their entire company, they could get the 1999 cars out next year

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 77

at half price." “It really is mankind against Microsoft. And

mankind needs a bit of a break right now. ... The market economy has got to win over the planned economy. And the Internet -- the open Internet -- has got to win. But [if the government doesn't enforce the law], well, bad things can happen to good people.”

Neelie Kroes, EU commissioner for

competition and new technologies: “Microsoft is not above the law. Each and

every company, large or small, operating in the European Union must obey EU law, including competition law, to the benefit of all companies and European consumers.

“In the 50 years of European antitrust policy,

it’s the first time we’ve been confronted with a company that has failed to comply with an antitrust decision”

“I told Microsoft that it should give legal

security to programmers who help to develop open source software and confine its patent disputes to commercial software distributors and end users.”

The US embassy in Brussels had contacted

Kroes and asked Mrs. Kroes to be a bit 'nicer' to Microsoft before she had taken the decision to fine Microsoft in July (2006). "I believe [the US] intervened in a responsibility which was on our shoulders at that time," Kroes told Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad. "I said I did not want…an

Page 41: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

78 MICROSOFT

intervention which cannot stand." Per Hellstrom, IT Director in the EU

Competition Directorate General: “Microsoft's pleas must be ignored. This is the

world according to Microsoft where it decides what is best for consumers.”

“Microsoft cannot be allowed to decide who

can innovate and who cannot.” “This case is of vital importance to innovation.

Microsoft has a chilling effect.” Last-Minute Conclusions For about ten years, the owner of OMNIS

GROUP LLC has been involved in an uneven battle with the "perverse system" that governs our country, with its exponents and with the most obscure interests. As an investigative journalist, I have been monitoring the confrontation for more than five years now and I have become increasingly surprised that justice is yet to come; that I live in a country where one or the other can say that black is white or vice versa by means of corruption, intelligence theft, fraud, threat, blackmail and many alike.

I have learned from state authorities that, to

this date, Dragoş Rişcanu still has to wait until justice will be done to him. In addition:

# His pirated software is still producing substantial benefits for the pirates, and one of the

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 79

business brains is Sebastian Vlădescu, the Minister of Finance. This minister, together with Prime Minister Emil Boc and President Traian Basescu, suggests the reduction of pensions that are already much under the minimum standard of living of retired people, the reduction of maternity and unemployment allowances, the reduction of all kind of aids for people in need and other aberrant decisions. And for what purpose? Against the crisis? Nonsense. Rather, in order to remain places where it can still be stolen from, so that the big ticks eating public funds could suck in the future, too.

# ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY, charged of stealing IT intelligence, as proved by many expertise reports and examinations, has acquired (or is about to acquire) several millions Euro of EU funds for the development of the company, more specifically, 14,739,180 ROL (respectively 3.5 million euro in June 2010) for “educating doctors and nurses from hospitals in the management and the use of new technologies”. At this money, the State participation with 2,601,032 ROL (627,000 euro) is also expected, while RSC will contribute to the project with only 912,644 lei (220.000 de euro). Nice deal, especially on times of crisis!

# OLAF (the European Anti-Fraud Office based in Brussels) and DLAF (the Romanian Anti-Fraud Department) are very well acquainted with the situation, but they both ignore it.

# Microsoft Company has committed to our state, under a strategic contract offered as a gift by the Adrian Năstase (Dan Nica) governance and extended by that of Emil Boc (Gabriel Sandu), to be the arbitrator of the Romanian IT market, a broken promise. Moreover, Microsoft testified that RSC has

Page 42: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

80 MICROSOFT

not stolen anything from OMNIS and that the pirated product does in fact belong to them. They have ignored deliberately the fact that, at the time, Microsoft had not been developing such technology, nor had they entered the Romanian market with the Navision product purchased from the Danes, somewhat similar to ISIS.net, but not advanced enough to win an international award.

# Judge Viorica Costiniu from the Bucharest Court of Appeal – wife of Judge Florin Costiniu, involved in Senator Cătălin Voicu`s corruption scandal – has found the intelligence theft to be as legal as possible. More specifically, she considered a deviant expertise conducted by a nonprofessional in software and intellectual property rights and ignored others conducted by well-known specialists in the field, including those of the only state authority with ability and expertise in this area, namely the Romanian Copyright Office (ORDA).

# The heads of the Prosecutor’s Office within the High Court of Cassation and Justice are well-acquainted with the case, and the delay to settle it is ascribed to its complexity.

# After ten years of work were stolen from them, OMNIS GROUP has been systematically thrown out of the market because the company has allowed itself to prove what a credible and inspired competitor it could be. Note that, since March 17, 2010, the Antitrust European Commission has opened infringement file no. 39784 against Microsoft for violation of European competition regulations.

# The property, which was stolen from Rişcanu based on false papers proven as such, is still under the administration of Chief Inspector (formerly Colonel) Adrian Murea, a surgeon working

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 81

in the hospital of the Ministry of Interior. In addition, the Romanian Justice forced its real owner to pay a security of 50 million ROL for his own home. The fact that Dr. Death, alias Murea, has used the identity of two dying persons in real estate frauds, that he is accused by his former father-in-law of attempted murder and theft or that he has abused his own son and his mother, so be it. Nevertheless, that he still performs surgery on PEOPLE, under such moral circumstances, is downright outrageous.

Metamorphosis of Black into White Faced with hallucinatory situations that few

could cope with, Dragoş Rişcanu believes that his troubles have begun many years ago, when the bodies of the former Communist repression apparatus targeted him. Reason for which, he has addressed the CNSAS (the National Council for the Study of Security Archives) in order to find out about ... his past. And thus, he has come across his microfilmed file no. 217 704 (background information) dated from 1984 and opened three years earlier, while he was in his last year at the Academy of Economic Studies.

Despite the troubles and the pressures that he has undergone over the years, Rişcanu is a hopeless optimist, which is contrary to my pessimism of a journalist who has lived and seen so many. He is convinced that justice will prevail in the end, and that, even if after twenty years, the law on lustration will fix something here and there. Exposing, for example, individuals as former Lieutenant Major Adrian Petre Podea, subsequently a judge in

Page 43: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

82 MICROSOFT

Ploieşti, now retired with an "outrageous" retirement pension, and possibly involved in Prahova county`s SRI mafia.

According to the documents prepared by Secret Police Officer Podea, also Military Unit (UM) 0666 kept Rişcanu Dragoş under active surveillance. This surveillance, for unknown reasons, was not disclosed to the petitioner. Is it perhaps because this political police activity is not over yet? For those who do not know it, UM 0666 and the 6th Directorate of the Secret Police, currently the Security and Protocol Directorate for officials, are one and the same.

The Journalistic Investigation

Continues My efforts to write this book will not stop here.

I will continue to seek the appropriate answers to those many questions about the Microsoft giant, which will be published in a second volume, or perhaps a third or a fourth.

I will extensively document the company`s business primarily on the European market, and the possible connection between Microsoft representatives and the Romanian political police, in its continuity, despite the fact that I give Rişcanu almost no chance to find his justice, at least not in Romania, where Justice is corrupt to the bone.

I might not be Truman Capote, who wrote "In Cold Blood" - laying the foundations of the contemporary criminal profile, but I cannot be passive at so many lies and injustice. The research on Microsoft will be thorough and deep, based on the past, the present and especially the future

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 83

development of the company. A company that, ten years ago, awarded ISIS.net as best ERP product in Europe, and after a number of years has orchestrated the exclusion of OMNIS GROUP LLC from the IT market, by brutally imposing a similar product.

As a result of five years of reporter

investigations, I have the feeling that the IT giant was imposed on the market using heavy political police instruments. Even if no blame can be brought – for now - on Bill Gates’ company, the mega-business has only one beneficiary: MICROSOFT COMPANY.

Page 44: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

Until now, the European Commission charged Microsoft fines of 1.68 billions USD for

BREAKING THE EUROPEAN LAWS AND IGNORING THE IMPOSED SANCTIONS, in a way

that no other company ever did it before.

Neelie Kroes, European Competition Commissioner, 2008: “In the 50 years of European antitrust policy, it’s the first time we’ve been confronted with a company

that has failed to comply with an antitrust decision”

ANNEXES

Page 45: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

ANNEX 1

ACTION PLAN of the Central Operative Group

I. OBJECTIVES 1. To fight against corruption and other

illegalities committed in the exercise of duty 2. To prevent deviant behavior by action

monitoring 3. To raise standards of integrity II. TARGETED PERSONS 1. Officials exercising state authority in areas

of financial control and management, public administration, Fraud Squad and customs control, the Romanian Court of Audit, the Health and Veterinary Police, consumer protection etc.

2. Employees of the Police and the Romanian Border Police, firefighters and employees of other structures of the Ministry of Interior, with prerogatives in the application of the legal provisions on the fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizens, property and with prerogatives of decision or control.

3. Prosecutors, judges, clerks or other public servants in the field of justice, who are involved in the process of justice administration

Page 46: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

88 MICROSOFT

B. Following information evaluation and

operational research on locations (customs crossing points, public service structures of the Ministry of Interior, Public Ministry, Ministry of Finance, certain trails, mandatory crossing points), to establish certain teams ( Annex. 2A and B) which quarterly or on call and based on the Action Plan, to monitor, capture and record on audio and video support, the conduct of public servant in the office.

To provide proof of facts and of recording evidences, with the permission of the prosecutor, technical means for communications interception will be used, provided by MU 0962 (former 0215, “two and a quarter” – N/A) or from SRI and the SIE; plans, schemes and operational combinations will be drafted; preparatory acts and procedural actions will be performed.

III. PLACES AND ENVIRONMENTS OF

ACTION 1. Merchants inspected by public officials that

collect debts and taxes, to control legislation compliance in the field of finance and accounting; regional and central headquarters where specific activities of licensing and issuing of financial and accounting documents are conducted; treasuries; debt rescheduling and restructuring towards the state budget; monitoring of the use of some funds; customs, customs offices, customs brokerage and other customs operators, provision of loans, legal constitution of guarantees; privatization, valuation and undervaluation of assets, economic and financial expertise and findings.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 89

2. Compartments, offices, departments, services, directions and other dedicated structures in the Ministry of Interior where identity cards, passports, gun permits, driving licenses, criminal records are issued; where visas are scheduled and issued; licensing, operation and construction (firefighters); state border and terrestrial, marine and aerial crossing points; targets, locations and environments where the activity of the ministry takes place.

3. Laboratories and institutions for veterinary analysis and licensing, consumer protection offices, controlled economic agents.

4. Bailiffs, courts, Prosecutor`s Offices, archives, places and environments specific to justice administration.

5. Central and territorial authorities involved in the exercise of state administration in the public servant – citizen relationship.

6. Other places and environments where corruption occurs.

IV. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 1.Information and data received from and

owned by MU 0962, the other units and structures within the Ministry of Interior, those held by the Prosecutor`s Offices and the (Court of) Justice will be centralized at the Prosecutor`s Office within the Supreme Court of Justice, the Central Operative Group, in view of evaluation.

Deadline: 20.01.2000

Page 47: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

90 MICROSOFT

Intelligence Services rank number three after the American and the British

(Article published in “Incisiv de Prahova”

weekly in 2009, signed by Dan Coste) A ninth intelligence secret service,

subordinated to the Ministry of Justice, is about to be established in Romania. After the dissolution - in 2006 - of the General Directorate for Protection and Anti-corruption (DGPA), former SIPA (Internal Service for Protection and Anti-corruption), the current Minister reinvested, Cătălin PreduŃoiu, intended to reinstate it, ostensibly so as to become legal, as according to the law. It all happened before the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis, the idea being temporarily abandoned at that moment due to the lack of funds.

The media has repeatedly reported that this service within the Ministry of Justice was nothing but an instrument of pressure, blackmail, corruption and protection of offenders, which dealt with everything else but the duties and powers assigned to it.

Among others, former Minister of Justice

Monica Macovei was accused of blackmailing magistrates with cases fabricated and put in storage in the DGPA-SIPA archives, which are currently sealed. Hence, the assumption arises that Predoiu wants access to them now and with any costs, on the eve of the presidential elections. As a well-known fact, Traian Băsescu is the one who insisted that the current minister maintained the position gained under the liberal government and he should return

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 91

his service. The SIPA archive contains enough material for it. In other words, the Minister of Justice in interested in free access to the controversial archive and not the abidance of law and the establishment of a domestic protection service.

Predoiu is recruiting secret agents "According to Law no. 51/1991 on national

security, Law no. 182/2002 on protection of classified information, and also GD no. 2005/2002 approving the national standards for the protection of classified information in Romania - under all these rules so important -, the Ministry of Justice is considered a designated security authority which has the duty, and I repeat, the duty, to organize and run their own system on its field", Cătălin Predoiu has recently stated on a radio station. So he only regards lawfulness, and he has closely consulted in this respect with Monica Macovei`s former collaborators, who know what and where to find in the archive, if necessary.

The National Union of Judges of Romania (UNJR) has strongly warned the ministry not to seek the reinstatement of a secret service in Justice as long as the legality of the operation of former SIPA - DGPA and the fate of its archive had not been clarified. According to sources, SIPA would have been particularly busy with the stakeout of magistrates and officials, the information thus obtained being likely to be used for blackmail purposes.

Judge Cristi Danilet, former adviser of Monica Macovei and currently targeted by Predoiu to be

Page 48: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

92 MICROSOFT

recruited into the newly, embellished secret service, stated that, as a member of the first committee for the inventory of the SIPA archive, he has found that most of the documents were anonymous informational notes, "such as gossip in the corridors of the court, unverified information which, if it became public, would be able to compromise the image of any Romanian magistrate".

Lustration, the only solution In a press release, UNJR also considers that

"The political parties must make the historic gesture to adopt the necessary legislative framework for a complete lustration and not only in relation to magistrates, but in relation to all legal professions: lawyers, public notaries, liquidators, bailiffs, etc.." The professional organization also states that, before creating a new secret service in Justice, authorized state agencies should call for legal mechanisms to disclose those who collaborated with the Secret Police bodies, and now occupying high offices in the magistracy. In addition, those who - after 1990 - were undercover agents or employees of various Romanian intelligence services against material interests and substantial benefits are also concerned.

"One can say that the lustration process has been limited only to uncover those persons who hold public office or intend to accede to such positions, who have been agents or collaborators of the Secret Police bodies, as political police, it is added in the release. In conclusion, lustration is necessary and it

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 93

is not too late for it as the solution for the recovery of the Romanian society, although almost 20 years have passed since the fall of the Ceausescu regime. In particular, Justice must be freed from such persons", the UNJR leadership believes.

Intelligence services that we are proud of

Romania ranks number three in the world, if

counting the intelligence services. 1. Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) 2. Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) 3. Protection and Guard Service (SPP) 4. Special Telecommunications Service (STS) 5. General Directorate for Defense

Intelligence (DGIA) - Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM, former

DIA) - Military Safety Directorate (DSM-2) 6. General Directorate of Intelligence and

Internal Security (DGIPI - Ministry of Foreign Affairs) 7. Directorate for the Investigation of

Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT - Ministry of Interior)

8. MU 0962, former MU 0215 (“Two and a quarter”) also of the Ministry of Interior

As a comparison, meant to observe how

properly we protect ourselves from spies and from the penetration of the system, we present the following list with the number of secret services in other countries:

Page 49: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

94 MICROSOFT

Austria - 3 services, Belgium - 2, Bulgaria - 2,

Canada - 5, China - 3, Switzerland - 4, France - 5, Germany - 3, Greece - 1, Israel - 3, Italy - 4, the Republic of Moldova -1, the Netherlands - 2, Poland - 5, the United Kingdom - 9, Russia - 4, Serbia - 1, Spain - 2, Sweden - 4, Turkey - 2, Ukraine – 3 and Hungary - 5.

If we establish one additional special service,

we will equal the British and get closer to the first place in the world, held by the Americans, with 17 operating intelligence services. Undoubtedly, the number of such bodies has no connection with their effectiveness in the protection against espionage and corruption, but does it truly matter?! What is important is that public money is spent and certain positions and certain people to benefit from their services. It is up to the readers to draw up the list of beneficiaries.

ANNEX 2 TECHNICAL-SCIENTIFIC

EXAMINATION - ORDA nr. 3973/31.01.2005 « … we consider that the applications

(computer programs) AMBULANCE and ARES.NET…contain significant reproductions of the application (computer program) ISIS.NET computer program (application), deposited at ORDA in view of registration in the Registry of Computer Programs by SC OMNIS GROUP SRL…respectively from the inspected 5,267 source code lines of the ISIS.NET program and the 5,108 source code lines of the AMBULANCE and ARES.NET programs - 4,119 lines/ parts of source code lines are identical.

In conclusion, I consider that parts of

computer programs (applications) AMBULANCE and ARES.NET are copies of parts of the computer program (application) ISIS.NET »

As resulted from the items exposed, the

conclusion of the technical-scientific findings and expertises issued is:

THE CODE SOURCE OF COMPONENTS OF

THE COMPUTER PROGRAMS ISIS.NET,

Page 50: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

96 MICROSOFT

CREATED BY OMNIS GROUP AND REGISTERED IN RPC ORDA, VITAL COMPONENTS FOR THE OPERATION OF RELEVANT PROGRAMS, WAS FULLY TAKEN OVER BY RSC AND USED IN THE PROGRAMS COMMERCIALIZED BY THIS COMPANY.

A lot of expert reports and

examinations In this case, police superintendent Florin

Mincă orders a legal technical expertise, appointing for this purpose the approved computer expert Ștefan Stăncescu. An expert who, even if being a teacher, is skilled in computers and not in software, having absolutely no expertise in the field of copyright (although he allowed himself to make conclusions in this respect).

ORDA experts will prove his aberrations on copyright, as you will learn from the following pages.

Stăncescu was assisted by an expert-hand, this time specialized in software, named Dumitru Galani. However, Stăncescu rejected his conclusions and did not include them in his own report, which prompted Galan to submit to court a dissenting opinion.

JUDICIAL TECHNICAL EXPERTISE REPORT nr. 7526/12.12.2005 ŞTEFAN STĂNCESCU

“According to art. 1 of law nr. 8/1996 the

author is the physical person(s) that created the work. In accordance with art. 4(1), it is presumed -

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 97

until the opposite is proven - that the author is the person under the name of whom the work has been brought to public knowledge. In accordance with art. 7. a) the computer programs are object of copyright. In accordance with art. 74, in the absence of a contrary clause, the rights on the computer programs, created by one or several employees in performing their job duties under the instructions of the employer, belong to the employer.

It may be considered that the approximate

percentage of similarities is 80% for the considered files….We may consider that, generally, the conclusions of our comparison converge to those in the ORDA report.

---- Bringing the program to the public knowledge

does not entirely grant the quality of being the author, under the possibility of identifying proofs that demonstrate the opposite. Such an opposite proof may consist in another source of information, other than OG, that inspired both parties. During the expertise, I did not find such a similar program.

Conclusions: The OG programs have been registered in

the Registry of Computer Programs at ORDA on March 6th, 2003. The correspondent RSC programs, which were analyzed, are not registered at ORDA and were sold to a beneficiary.

Three pairs of correspondent files were analyzed and 80% of similar source code lines were

Page 51: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

98 MICROSOFT

found. There are compact blocks of more than 50 identical lines, but not more than 80 identical lines together.

The similarities may originate in copying from a source, with modifications.

The similarities may also originate in taking over from third sources, found on the INTERNET, where this type of applications is notorious. There were not identified sources that present significant similarities with the three files studied. “

JUDICIAL TECHNICAL EXPERTISE

REPORT no. 7527/12/12.2005 DUMITRU GALANI “In accordance with the technical scientific

examination no. 3973/01.31.2005, issued by ORDA, that establishes that 4119 (78%) of the code lines of interface programs used by RSC are found within the code lines of the interface programs registered by OG at ORDA, it may be stated that such a reproduction is almost impossible. The only form under which these code lines are found in the RSC application was possible only by their physical copying from the server at OG on an external support and their transfer into the RSC application.

From the above mentioned, it results that

these files have been copied from OG and introduced into the RSC application, by one or several persons, that were part of the development team. »

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 99

JUDICIAL TECHNICAL EXPERTISE

REPORT DUMITRU GALANI, June 19th, 2006 “The results of the expertise establish 100%

identity for 4,884 lines code source sampled from the ISIS.NET system and included in the applications presented by RSC on the site www.rsc.ro. This identity appears also at the level of the personal print of the company that created the product: specifications and documentation of source code, topic of instructions, sequence of procedures, names of functions and variables, as well as programming and spelling errors.

This identity would not be possible

unless one of the parties had access to the server of the other party and physically copied the program files. “

ORDA TECHNICAL – SCIENTIFIC

EXAMINATION no. 6933/08.27th, 2007 “Valentin CornăŃel, superior ORDA - the

Expertises and Examinations Directorate - expert, in the interest of solving the criminal file nr. 786/P/16.07.2007, following the address of the Public Ministry, the Prosecution Office of the Bucharest Court, registered at ORDA with nr. 7911/20.08.2007, as well as according to the resolution of the Bucharest General Police Directorate – Fraud Investigation Department of July

Page 52: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

100 MICROSOFT

23rd 2007 that ordered, according to articles 112 and 113 of the criminal procedure code, for a scientific examination to be performed on the source codes of the programs HIPOCRATE registered at ORDA in 2002 by Romanian Soft Company, on the proofs collected from the Internet by OMNIS GROUP and deposited in the criminal file, on the program registered at ORDA in 2003 by Omnis Group, on the programs registered at ORDA in 2005 by Romanian Soft Company and with proofs collected by judicial police from the Emergency Hospital of the Ministry of Interior "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota", the following conclusions can be established:

The conclusion regarding the analysis of the

two files Grid.js (source code Omnis Group RPC ORDA) and HTools.js (source code sampled on RSC site) is that the specifications and documentation of source code, topic of instructions, sequence of procedures, names of functions and variables, as well as spelling errors of Grid.js (source code Omnis Group RPC ORDA) are found in HTools.js (source code collected from RSC site)…

On this reason, it may be stated that Grid.js (source code Omnis Group RPC ORDA) was initially used and modified, and the result was HTools.js (source code sampled on RSC site).

Concluding, by the analysis of the source code files Omnis Group RPC ORDA :Grid.js, Hdate.js, CalendarPopup.js, LeftSideMenu.js and the source code files collected from the RSC web site: HTools.js, Hdate.js, CalendarPopup.js, LeftSideMenu.js belonging to the client component elements, the source code Omnis Group deposited in RPC ORDA can completely be found in the

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 101

source code collected from the RSC web site, being modified or completed with additional functionalities”.

ORDA TECHNICAL – SCIENTIFIC

EXAMINATION no. 7649/26.11.2007 “Regarding the object of the resolution on the

comparison of programs deposited in the ORDA registry by SC Omnis Group SRL in 2003 with the evidences collected from the Internet by the representatives of SC Omnis Group SRL, from the site www.rsc.ro, the comparison made the object of a prior technical-scientific examination. The Technical-Scientific Examination Report no. 6933 of 08.27th, 2007 was concluded, stating the fact that the files Grid.js, ogDate.js, CalendarPopup.js, LeftSideMenu.js, belonging to the Omnis Group source code, representing access and navigation components of the client interface of ISIS.NET application, without which this application cannot operate, are completely identified, with modifications and additions, as files with the names Htools.js, Hdate.js, CalendarPopup.js and LeftSideMenu.js, in the source code collected from the site www.rsc.ro and which are access and navigation components of the client interface, without which the display of the user interface files is not possible.”

National Forensic Institute - EXPERTISE

REPORT no. 59/24.03.2008 The “CalendarPopup.js” files on the CD 3

„Omnis Group / ISIS.NET” and on CD 2, in litigation, contain identical code lines, both from the logic and

Page 53: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

102 MICROSOFT

lexical point of view, and from the point of view of desktop-publishing errors.

The “LeftSideMenu.js” files on the CD 3 „Omnis Group / ISIS.NET” and on CD 2, in litigation, contain identical code lines, both from the logic and lexical point of view, and from the point of view of desktop-publishing errors.

“The programs used by the offender on

the date of creating CD1 (06.08th, 2006) contain identical code lines to those of the ISIS.NET program, created by the plaintiff”.

The Bucharest 2nd District Court decision

of 06.11th, 2008 in the file no. 10870/300/2005: “The expertise has been concluded in this

cause, but not entirely, due to the impossibility of the expert to expertise all the offender’s computers, the access to most of them being restricted by RSC with passwords.

In addition, the impossibility of analyzing all

the offender’s servers was due to the bad faith of the third party RSC that repeatedly refused to provide access to the restricted servers, containing information that could not be accessed.

Not at least, the impossibility to expertise all

the data on offender’s computers was due to the attitude of the RSC representative who, participating to the expertise performed by the expert Dumitrascu Marin, abusively applied on the CD containing the expertise data an access password that restricts the

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 103

access to the copied information, under the circumstances in which RSC did not hold the quality of being part in the process.”

ORDA EXPERTISE REPORT NO. 1/06.23RD,

2008 ON THE COPYRIGHTS OF THE COMPUTER PROGRAM ISIS.NET

1. The ISIS.NET application is an original

intellectual creation work, in accordance with art. 7 of Law 8/1996 regarding the copyrights and connected works.

2. The personal print of author consists of the history of development of the system (aspects that result also from the SourceSafe environment), by the internal development standards, by the names of files and directories in the project. The source code includes specifications, documentation and author comments, issued in accordance to the internal development standards.

3. Without the existence of the intellectual contribution, as presented in the current expertise, such software application could not have been created.

4. Taking into account the items mentioned in the current expertise, we may state that the computer program ISIS.NET was brought to public knowledge in accordance with Law 8/1996, both in beta test phase, and in final functional phase, which allowed this application to be commercialized. “

Page 54: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

104 MICROSOFT

Ill-will, obscure interests, or just

incompetence? Analyzing all these expertises completed in

time, let us see what have been the conclusions reached by the prosecution, and especially by the judges who handled and tried the indisputable case of intelligence theft.

RELEASE FROM CRIMINAL PURSUIT

REPORT – SUPERINTENDENT FLORIN MINCĂ, FILE 6949/P/2004 (04/11/2006)

By which the mediocrity of a Police

employee, who receives huge salaries and undeserved bonuses from public money, can easily be established

At the beginning of the two defendants`

“cleanup” report, the man of law starts by reviewing their justifications, including the fact that they would have been inspired by Microsoft`s Navision software, even before it was bought by Bill Gates's company. However, Mincă's stupidity does not stop there. He later quotes the Stăncescu Report claiming that the IT pirates had actually used Microsoft.net public technologies, while the company had not been developing any such ERP product.

Moreover, the cop also studies the copyright law, by interpreting it in an absurd, unfounded, arbitrary and even hilarious way, so clearly revealed, two years later, by the ORDA experts. Here are some telling examples in this regard:

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 105

"Regarding the statement of SC OMNIS GROUP that they received a prize in 2002 for the ISIS system as their creation work, we assert that this application received a mention from Microsoft European RAD Awards, but it was for the best use of public Internet technologies and hence not for an original intellectual creation work. We emphasize that the graphical user interface that was used is BROWSER type … consisting of editable grids… whose original creation belongs to Microsoft."

In other words, Mincă accredits the idea that if

an inventor develops penicillin and creates a new drug to cure tuberculosis, it is Sir Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, who owns the patent, and not him. Alternatively, if a mathematician develops an innovative formula in the field, it belongs to the Arabs who invented the figures used in it. Nevertheless, the epaulette-stupidity does not stop here.

"SC OMNIS GROUP did not prove that the

elements identified as identical in the expertise represent their intellectual creation work..."

The idea was quoted from another “bright”

computer expert (and not software expert - which is something different) Ştefan Stăncescu. We support this idea, because it is not the inventor who has to demonstrate that his work is original, but his opponents have to prove that it is not.

Based on the "scientific" findings of police

worker Mincă, extremely specialized on intellectual property issues, it is the Prosecutor`s Office`s turn to

Page 55: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

106 MICROSOFT

draw the final conclusions on the intelligence theft committed by Dragoş Săracu and Irinel Lupei. Thus enters the scene prosecutor Nicoleta Bulgaru, from the Prosecutor`s Office within Bucharest Court, a very controversial figure promoted from ConstanŃa for outstanding achievements. Where, along with former police captain Grigore Peşterău (today, a lawyer) has been involved in several criminal cases concerning the confiscation and mysterious disappearance of large quantities of imported goods, without anyone being able to prove that they had been illegally imported. For lack of space, we will not focus on this character but we will limit ourselves to revealing the conclusions reached by prosecutor Bulgaru - after only one week to examine the file - which are perfectly matching the defendants` statements and superintendent Mincă`s report.

ORDINANCE TO STOP CRIMINAL PURSUIT

IN FILE 6949/P/2004 (19/04/2006) - prosecutor Nicoleta Bulgaru

At the beginning, the aberrations of the

defendants and of the so-called expert Stăncescu were quoted again. According to them, the RSC products developed by Săracu and Lupei were created based on the Navision software, property of Microsoft, at the time when the American company did not own any ERP-type product and had not yet bought the Danish company. Then, not being able to state an opinion of her own, and because of her lack of training and expertise, Nicoleta Bulgaru copied Florin Mincă`s conclusions. Towards the order`s end, because her own input was also necessary, the

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 107

prosecutor made a mix of what she understood from the file (but only in a certain direction), without having the slightest connection with the reality:

"Omnis Group does not present other

evidences to prove that it created the computer programs for which it obtained the authorship (as if the authorship was the essence of the criminal file, and not the theft of intellectual property - n.n.), as a creation work, and because it cannot prove that it is the author of the analyzed files, Omnis Group accuses without holding evidences that it was the victim of a fraud..."

What the famous prosecutor Bulgaru from

ConstanŃa supports can be extrapolated as follows: A father complains that his son was kidnapped. He files the complaint, hands over the requested documents and expects the law enforcing authorities to take action and to find his boy. There is no result whatsoever. How would they know that the boy is truly his father`s? To overcome such doubts, DNA tests would be necessary to carry out, statements from the mother, the mother-in-law, the Deputy Marriage Commissioner and the priest who joined them in matrimony, the witnesses who were present, and a statement from the wife to assume, by declaration of liability, the date when conception occurred. Moreover, the statements of the medical assistant, of the priest who baptized him, or of the godfather who cut his tuft and so on are needed. Only then will the police start searching for the kidnapped person, this time aware of the situation. This is how the prosecution authorities think and act in this case.

Page 56: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

108 MICROSOFT

Equally interesting is another assessment of

expert Nicoleta Bulgaru, from the same ordinance quoted above. This goes something like: "Omnis Group LLC filed a complaint concerning the applications` intellectual property theft by former employees, in order not to lose the skilled programmers and to block the activity of a competing company, in this case RSC LLC”.

Somehow more cautious, or rather just

overwhelmed by the duties of office, First Prosecutor Dragoş Nestor (another character involved in numerous scandals) took his time for about two months until he countersigned Nicoleta Bulgaru`s ordinance to stop the criminal prosecution of the two defendants. Undoubtedly, not understanding what the case was about, and not having the necessary time to study the matter, he also copied from the reports of the defendants and of the authorities who showed their best interest to declare them innocents.

ORDINANCE FIRST PROSECUTOR

DRAGOŞ NESTOR, CRIMINAL FILE 6949/P/2004 (9.06.2006)

"... all the applications in litigation use

Microsoft public technologies (technologies that use the latin alphabet, but nobody challenges their parenthood - n.n.) from the Internet and hence they are not original...

The Omnis Group applications claimed as being copied are widely recognized and do not represent any innovation in this domain (what if

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 109

Microsoft itself awarded them the first prize for the program - n.n.)"

That was the best he could do. Meaning that,

according to the high magistrate`s opinion, all innovative software applications that rely on this technology belong, in fact, to the company of multibillionaire Bill Gates, isn`t that so? It is as if any pharmaceutical product based on penicillin, for example, belonged to the inventor of this substance. Or, as if the paternity of all diesel engines designed by Rudolf Diesel in 1892 belonged to him. According to the scholarly opinion of the First Prosecutor Dragoş Nestor, the same category can include: walking, the fire, the hot water, the wheel and many more other inventions.

CRIMINAL SENTENCE NO. 668 OF THE

BUCHAREST COURT OF APPEAL, FILE 16828/3/2007 (21/05/2008) - JUDGE VIORICA COSTINIU

No other than the wife of Judge Florin

Costiniu, of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, deeply involved in a recent corruption scandal, along with Senator Cătălin Voicu and businessmen Costel Căşuneanu and Marius Locic. Even more, Mr. and Mrs. Costiniu are supposedly both specialized - among others - in intellectual property issues.

Without specifying where she got her

inspiration from, the wife of the judge now

Page 57: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

110 MICROSOFT

investigated by the DNA has reached a truly puzzling conclusion, diametrically opposing those reached by most experts, except for the Stăncescu masquerade. Either a conclusion that proves that she has read another file, or that some obscure interests, that we do not even want to suspect, have dictated her decision.

"The expertise report concludes that the

statements of the ORDA experts, regarding the important weight of similar program parts, are not valid. The similarities may be due to the utilization of public Microsoft .net technologies.

The defendant (Dragos Saracu) stated that

ISIS modules and functionalities can be identified, partially or totally, in other well-known similar applications, as well as that the ideas and concepts he acquired during his professional formation, his prior activities included, were based on IT novelties provided to the public by reputed suppliers such as Microsoft. These ideas, concepts and technologies are published on the Internet to be used by programmers worldwide...

The defendant RSC later submitted additional

appeal motivations, stating that: The similar elements that were identified …

are due to the fact that, both OMNIS GROUP and ROMANIAN SOFT COMPANY’s programs derive from an original creation belonging to Microsoft, provided to the public on the Internet, for free. It was in this respect that the expertise established that "the common program parts include a well-known

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 111

experience presented on the Internet, proven by the existence of numerous similar applications".

At the time when the software piracy occured,

Microsoft had not owned such technologies and the company had not been developing such applications. It is also very strange how the conclusion of an expert in computers (and not in software) is enforced, while those of the OMNIS-side expert (specialized in software) and ORDA, are both ignored. In this case, what is the need in our country for an institution to represent the intellectual property rights, since one judge or another has his or her own opinions in the field, well beyond the law?

CRIMINAL SENTENCE NO. 130/F,

BUCHAREST TRIBUNAL, CRIMINAL SECTION I, FILE 25165/3/2008 (04/02/2009)

This competent court also reiterates the

absurd opinion of expert Ştefan Stăncescu, maintaining that the elements claimed to have been copied are of a notorious character and are not protected by law. We consider it absurd for at least two reasons: 1. - because the Guardian Angel of our country itself, Microsoft Company, has recognized and rewarded the OMNIS GROUP product that was subsequently pirated and 2. – how notorious some features downloaded from Microsoft can be, as to appear absolutely identical both in the ISIS.net software application and in those created by RSC LLC, including the programmer`s imprint, orthography and grammar errors?

Page 58: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

112 MICROSOFT

Needless to mention that the court was in no mood to even consider ORDA expertise report no. 1 of 23/06/2008, which states in black and white what is "an original work of intellectual creation, within the meaning of Art. 7 of Law 8 / 1996 on copyright and related rights”.

As a conclusion, Justice has had the occasion to decide, on one hand, between the defendants` statements and the expertise of a specialist in computers - and not software or copyright – and, on the other hand, among other three (3) technical and scientific findings, two (2) legal technical expertises, one (1) criminal expertise and one (1) expertise on copyright. In spite everything, it concluded that the defendants and the expert in computers are right, as compared to the opinions of others, who are real specialists, and who claimed that the OMNIS GROUP product has been pirated. In addition, the representatives of justice did not take into account the circumstantial evidence of piracy, which demonstrates that a company with one, two or three employees cannot achieve a software implementation of this scale overnight.

ANNEX 3 Ministry of Interior Medical Department

Emergency Hospital of the Ministry of Interior "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota" Bucharest

No. 232 762/M of 19.06.2003 To GENERAL DIRECTORATE OF

INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNAL PROTECTION We have the honor to ask you, according to

the regulations of the Order No. 340 of November 1, 2002, of the Ministry of Interior, regarding the donations and sponsorship within the Ministry of Interior, to favorably endorse a donation offer. This donation consists of a „software for the management of medical activities”, in value of 4,852,650,000 ROL excluding VAT (according to the address no. 31 from June 18, 2003, which we annex in copy), offered by the Medical Foundation „Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota” from Bucharest.

We mention that this software is necessary to our unit in order to improve the medical activity, because it can better reflect the flow followed by the hospitalized patients, including the financial costs

Page 59: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

114 MICROSOFT

and the activity of contracting and reporting to the Insurance House.

Accepting the donations will decrease the expenses with the medical act in the context of insufficient funds assured by the social health insurance system.

We annex hereby a copy of the address no. 141.868 of June 16, 2003, of the Communications and Informatics Directorate, which presents the conclusions of this Directorate after testing and verifying the software product that is to be received as a donation.

On those presented above, please dispose appropriately.

Yours sincerely, Director of the hospital Chief Commissioner Dr. Rosu Viorel

ANNEX 3’

Ministry of Interior Communications and Informatics Directorate

Not Secret Nr. 141.868

Bucharest, 16.06.2003

To the Emergency Hospital “Prof. Dr. D. Gerota” Chief Commissioner Rosu Viorel – hospital

manager I have the honor to inform you that on June 6th

2003 participated at the presentation of the HIPOCRATE application, on behalf of the Communications and Informatics Directorate, Mrs. Cms. Corina Artopolescu and Mr. scms. Ovidiu Ursu.

Following the application’s presentation and

discussions with representatives of the development company and with system users, the next ideas can be highlighted:

The application was tested by the beneficiary.

Following the testing session, an acceptance minute that stipulates the modifications necessary for optimal program functioning, as requested by users, was signed.

The software product answered to current

Page 60: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

116 MICROSOFT

requirements but, due to law changes and to the National Defence medical system, this has to be changed according to new requirements.

In the future, according to the current

legislative context, yearly and as many times as required, the frame contract and reporting to the Health Insurance House change significantly, implying a dynamic application evolution.

The donation did not include the source code,

but only the rights to operate the application. This implies that any change required by the beneficiary can only be implemented by the developer.

The application allows remote operation, situation currently in use. The hospital has also spaces in two distinct locations that are connected to the hospital server. In the future, the system will be connected to the Clinic of the Ministry of Interior and to Medical Directorate locations. The existence of a unique database is imposed by the unique reporting requirements.

The hospital specifics, given by the medical

system of public order and National Defence, impose that the acquisition of a product from the market implies modifications and customizations according to these specifics.

With high regards, Chief of the Communications and Informatics

Directorate Chief Commissioner eng. Constantin Grigore

– signature and stamp

ANNEX 4 Right to reply requested to ZIUA daily by RSC

LLC on 14.05.2007 and not published for the reasons set out in Chapter III.

ZIUA daily has won a well-deserved place on

the media market by the professionalism, the accuracy and the high code of ethics that one can meet in every article published.

Based on these assumptions, we would like to clarify some aspects related to the article published on May 14, 2007, aimed at the so-called RCS software piracy:

1. The competent authorities completed the

criminal investigation concerning the case by concluding that the deed was not done.

2. The owner of OMNIS GROUP LLC has a passion for filing both criminal and civil complaints, reaching a record performance of 270 such complaints against police, prosecutors, postal workers and all social categories beginning with the letter “P”. We understand the eccentric passion that he has developed and nurtured with such perseverance.

3. We are absolutely ecstatic that Dan Coste, the author of the article, took so much care to present as equidistantly as possible the facts, which

Page 61: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

118 MICROSOFT

are sacred and the comments, which are free. Your editorial office should be proud of such journalists who demonstrate a high sense of ethics and a deep analysis capability, thus perpetuating ZIUA daily`s good reputation.

4. The only thing that was noteworthy in the article was Bill Gates’ envy towards the achievements of RSC. We will do everything possible to notify him on the matter.

We are available for further details and we

invite you to also contact us in the future in order to provide you with the necessary information for your journalistic efforts.

Yours sincerely, Elisei Crăciun RSC General Manager

ANNEX 5 Complaint of RSC LLC against me, addressed

to the Romanian Press Club`s Board of Honour, in the attention of President Cristian Tudor Popescu.

RSC would like to draw the attention of the

Romanian Press Club`s Board of Honour on some flagrant violations of the Journalist`s Code of Ethics that ZIUA daily encourages in some of its articles.

We are referring to the "Software Piracy at Dr. Death`s Hospital" article published on 14.05.2007, "Piracy within the Ministry of Interior and the Romanian Intelligence Service" article published on 05/06/2007 and " Vlădescu`s Pirates", published on 15.06.2007, that bring serious image damage to RSC.

The author of the journalistic approach, Dan Coste, infringes Article no. 5 of the Code of Ethics, which states: "In case of divergent opinions, the journalist will publish the views of all parties involved. No accusations will be made without giving the accused the opportunity to express his or her views ... The journalist will not take the place of the public institutions”. In addition, Dan Coste violates Article no. 2, which states: "the journalist can only publish information whose reliability is certain, having previously examined it, by usually using at least two credible sources".

Page 62: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

120 MICROSOFT

It is unfortunate that ZIUA LLC, which is a founding member of the Romanian Press Club and member of the Honorary Board, encourages such conduct that grossly violates the right to image. Moreover, we were not even given the right of reply, although we have requested it following the publication of the "Software Piracy at Dr. Death`s Hospital " article on 14/05/2007.

We express our indignation that ZIUA LLC, founding member of the Romanian Press Club, does not understand that the journalistic activity has a strong social responsibility side that every journalist should actively uphold.

Please take the measures you consider appropriate in such a situation.

Many thanks, Bogdan Savu RSC Executive Manager

ANNEX 6

Network of the dying (Article published in ZIUA on August 15, 2006) Crooks and law breakers have invented ways

to steal homes in which people sleep peacefully, with the property title certificates under their pillow. In order to delete any traces, criminals employ people on their deathbeds, who die soon after having been used. Neither those who lose their homes overnight, nor the dying accomplices have any idea of the swindlers` plan. Thieves use false notarial acts issued in the U.S.[sic], that they later capitalize on in Romania with the support of a notary. Then, based on the principle of good-faith buyer, the swindlers become legal owners of the stolen houses. Confronted with such mischievous acts involving people who should defend the law, the Ministry of Justice, the Police and the Prosecutor`s Office are only simulating investigation. The injured parties are forced to live their lives inside the courts, trying to recover the homes that have been stolen from under their noses. The ramifications of the fraud extend to "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota” Hospital of the Ministry of Administration and Interior and to the Romanian Police. ZIUA presents you the case of two patients who, as false trustees, sold properties while they were suffering from terminal cancer and were non-

Page 63: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

122 MICROSOFT

transportable. The beneficiaries of these transactions are colonel surgeon Adrian Murea and Joseph Stark. All papers involved in these frauds have been certified as valid by the public notary Livia Alexandru. If Stark was put behind bars due to the criminal offences that he had committed, doctor Murea, surgeon at the Hospital of the Ministry of Administration and Interior, is untouchable. And so is the notary who approved the revolting sales. Prosecutors claim that the Ministry of Justice would not give its consent for the investigation.

Transactions on the deathbed It all began when four heirs living abroad have

reacquired the property rights on the building at 39, Kiseleff Street.: a property consisting of three buildings and an area of nearly 4000 sqm. Shortly thereafter, the property was sold by the trustee of the four, namely Ştefan Gavrilă, to HARDINCOM 2000 LLC, represented by the Iraqi Ihab F. Abed. On the same day, public notary Livia Alexandru certified this transaction and another one, by which the property was sold to Joseph Stark. At first glance, everything looks legal. However, the reality is different. The four heirs did in fact never intend to sell their property. Therefore, it was a fraud involving false powers of attorney issued on behalf of Ştefan Gavrilă by Californian public notary Shelly Schwartz. However, these could not be legal because none of the heirs was on U.S. territory at the date when it was drafted and even more, the document did not bear the necessary Apostille. In addition, Gavrilă was 75 years old, suffering from cancer and was admitted

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 123

into “Dr. Gerota“Ministry of Interior`s Hospital. Moreover, the old man died two weeks later, all the while being non-transportable. More specifically, he could not have come into the office of notary Livia Alexandru (on May 23, 2002). The border police has documents certifying Iraqi citizen Abed`s entrance into our country in 1997 but since then they no longer have any data on him. In addition to that, during the searches conducted in Stark`s home, a passport issued on his name was found there. It should also be added that, although the deceased trustee`s family has repeatedly insisted that the hospital releases his medical records, they have not yet come into their possession.

Dr. Murea gets involved Just two days before these two dirty

transactions, notary Livia Alexandru authenticates another sale-purchase agreement. This time it was between Graziela Wagner and Doina Ionescu Dumitrescu and it concerned another building in Bucharest located on 75, Emanoil Porumbaru Street.

On signing the documents, the seller was represented by trustee Adrian Murea, colonel surgeon at the Ministry of Interior`s hospital. His status was given by the power of attorney drafted before public notary Antonio Martinez in New York. Yet again, the power of attorney did not contain the necessary Apostille, the military doctor not being on vacation during that period and even less on the American continent. Moreover, that Martinez does not even exist, and a stamp with similar digital imprints to that on the power of attorney was found

Page 64: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

124 MICROSOFT

in Stark's home, when searched by the nice police forces.

To denounce Stark - because there was no other solution – PICCJ, by prosecutor Alexandra Mihaela Şinc`s signature, "orders the severance of the cause in view of further research”. On one hand, notary Livia Alexandru was removed from the picture because the Ministry of Justice would not have consented to her arraignment; and on the other hand, prosecutor Şinc failed to establish the exact contribution of Murea in committing the offense, thus clearing his name.

In other words, the colonel had used a fake power of attorney to defraud owner Graziela Wagner, the stamp that had been used was found in Stark`s home, but between the two accused no complicity could be established. Moreover, no one was able to find out who had forged the documents, although the stamps have been found in Stark`s home. This could only mean that: prosecutor Şinc either believes that the injured victims are stupid or that she has some well-defined interests to treat them as such.

Swindling involving Sadoveanu`s house In 1988, having dual citizenship, Romanian

and Swiss, Dragoş Rişcanu bought from Ruxandra-Ioana Huch a property in a privileged area of Bucharest. The building is in District 1, on 47, Barbu Delavrancea Street and is composed of a house, a garage and an area of 788.1 square meters. It all costed 300,000 USD. In good agreement with the tenants, he offered them two apartments in a block

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 125

of flats and a studio, concluded bailment agreements valid throughout their lives, assumed to pay all maintenance costs and even further than that, to also give them other material support. At the time, the press commented on this arrangement, given that one of the women was none else but Profira Sadoveanu daughter of the writer with the same name, who has since died. Another tenant was Sadoveanu`s son-in-law, former director of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company between 1928-1930.

Towards the end of '98 and with the intention to repair the building on Delavrancea Street, Rişcanu ordered a technical expertise that ascertained its high degree of deterioration. Around that time, he also learned that the house was on the list of memorial houses, and not on that of historical heritage buildings. A whole procedure followed, through administrative channels, to free the property of charges in order to be demolished and have another be built instead. There were lawsuits, including with the Ministry of Culture - although Sadoveanu had lived there for only five years -, but eventually the final decision has been given in favor of the new owner.

The surprise came in May 2003 when, being in ConstanŃa, Dragoş Rişcanu learned from his assistant that he could no longer pay the taxes on the property he had purchased. The reason: it no longer belonged to him. The surprise turned even bigger when he learned that he had supposedly sold his house to a colonel working within the Ministry of Administration and Interior; that he was none other than surgeon Adrian Murea from “Dr. Gerota”

Page 65: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

126 MICROSOFT

Hospital; that the sale, accomplished through a trustee, had been certified at a notary office in Bucharest; and that the office belonged to notary Livia Alexandru and it was located on 23/10, Ion Câmpineanu street, ap. 72, district 1.

Stunned by what was happening Rişcanu addressed the Chamber of Public Notaries by soliciting the presence of Livia Alexandru and the archive file. To be noted that the spokesperson of the institution was Alexandru Basarab Şinc, the father of the prosecutor who would investigate the case and clear Adrian Murea`s name.

With great astonishment, Rişcanu learned that, in 2002, in the U.S., he had supposedly mandated a certain Ştefan Macovei to sell his house in Bucharest. Aside the fact that he has never in his life heard of Macovei and of doctor Murea, Rişcanu had not even been in the U.S. for the last five years. From this point on, being the injured party, he has begun his own investigation in parallel with the Police and PICCJ.

Mystery resolved "Trustee" Ştefan Macovei was an active

worker in the Ministry of Administration and Interior, and had been in fact doctor Murea`s patient in the ministry`s hospital. In addition to that, the old man, also suffering from cancer - great coincidence! - "considered" selling his treating doctor a luxury home right before he died. Thus, about two weeks after the conclusion of the transaction by which Rişcanu lost his home, he passed away. Moreover, although under perfusion and morphine, nearly

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 127

unconscious and non-transportable, according to the fake documents he had managed to reach the notary office of Livia Alexandru.

In his own opinion, Rişcanu believes that Dr. Adrian Murea intended to further sell the property gained through this large-scale fraud, the next buyer or buyers becoming bona fide purchasers. Only that this was not possible due to the following reason. When signing the sale - purchase agreement, Rişcanu only paid a deposit to Huch, the house remaining free of any rights to a vendor`s lien until the whole amount would have been paid. The buyer paid the rest of the money through a bank in Switzerland, but the privilege has not been raised, and Dr. Murea, or those who have manipulated him, could not implement their plan concerning the successive sale of the property.

Rişcanu takes the stand "Such real estate scams are possible within a

window of opportunity of only one year. While the legal owner pays the taxes, he is defrauded by the Mafia by several successive sales performed during one year. At some point in one of my conversations with Mr. Murea, three months after I had learned about this real estate theft, I have asked him how did he think that I would ever accept to be cheated in such a way, since he can not prove that he paid to buy that house. Using a calm voice tone and being very self-possessed he answered: "You do not even know what world you’re living in". He addressed me with a calm, friendly, almost paternal voice, which - honestly speaking - terrified me. For the first time in

Page 66: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

128 MICROSOFT

my life, I was truly scared. I have been listening to a MAI officer, who is also a surgeon, and who was discretely threating me by being in conspiracy with one of the biggest crooks, and by that I mean Joseph Stark."

Murea believes he is the victim I have contacted “Dr. MAI” and he posed as

victim from the moment he learned of the investigation initiated by ZIUA. "Have you seen the sale - purchase agreement? I cannot tell you how many troubles I had to face because of this transaction. Of course, I agree to meet, to talk. I`ll even give you my phone number."

I have called Adrian Murea on the phone on five different ocassions. First, he asked me to postpone the meeting to the next day, and that he would call us. He has not. The second time, we settled for Thursday. Then, either he was about to meet with some friends, or he was in the surgery hall, which proved that our journalistic approach has been futile. To this day, we are still waiting for him to contact us, as we are convinced that “Dr. MAI” has much to hide.

Colonel Nesterov is threatening Although the Police and the Prosecutor`s

Office had been notified concerning a possible fraud, no one knows how, but Dr. Murea managed to register the building on Delavrancea Street in his name. Three weeks before, col. Nesterov, Director of the Judicial Investigation Directorate within the

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 129

General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police had started a secret investigation in order to clean Dr.Murea’s name. After much insistence, Rişcanu found out about this from deceased Macovei`s family, whose children - another coincidence - are both working within the Romanian Intelligence Service - SRI. The investigation was in charge of Superintendent Cristian Ene. Rişcanu solicited to be received and, after four days, he reached an office located on Ştefan cel Mare Street and found himself in the company of seven police officers. Next, we quote again the true owner of the property: "I have told them from the beginning that there was reliable data and evidence on the offenders. They kept beating around the bush and telling me that they had no information to claim something like that, that there were no such records in the archives and other similar stupidities. Moreover, col. Nesterov recommended that I had better stood there, in Switzerland, with my wife and children, as in Romania many things can happen - someone can simply harm us someday. He continued threatening that if I did not give them some kind of statement, I would not be allowed to leave the country anymore, although I have dual, Romanian and Swiss, citizenship,."

Retired to escape the severity of the law Subsequently, the Prosecution Office has

proved that the empowerment through which the deceased Macovei had sold the property to Rişcanu is false, and such is the alleged signature of the owner, Dragoş Rişcanu. In the U.S., there was

Page 67: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

130 MICROSOFT

neither a notary named Helene Nilson, who could have authenticated the empowerment, nor a Richmond Department within the state of New York. Also, according to the graphological expertise of the Forensic Institute within the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police, "the signature in dispute submitted to the position ..." in the sale-purchase agreement no. 424/4.10.2002 was not done by Ştefan Macovei.”

Rişcanu further accounts:”From that moment on, there has been a dissension between the controversial police officer Nesterov and his subordinate, Ene. The colonel seized the file, saying that he would solve the matter, but his subordinate Ene opposed him, arguing that the case had been assigned to him. For my family had been threatened, I warned colonel Nesterov that I would call the attention of the Western press trusts to write about this fascinating subject. The police officer then loosened up and asked me not to do that, because he would solve the problem. After one week, even though we had talked on the phone just three days before, I learned that Nesterov had retired.”

(Today he is part of the management of the

District 2 Community Police Force, in addition to his retirement pension also cashing a nice salary from public money)

"Spicy" details We have tried to contact public notary Livia

Alexandru, at her office located in 23, Ion Câmpineanu Street. At that address, we came

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 131

across a company that deals with ventilation systems, the people there having no idea about any public notary. After more investigations, we have discovered that Livia Alexandru tried to delete all her traces by secretly changing her office`s address into 66/37, Mr. Alex. Câmpeanu St., ap. 4, District 1. Meanwhile, we have found some more issues that raise even more question marks concerning the individuals involved in this real estate fraud. Here are some examples: deceased Macovei`s family had filed a criminal complaint against Dr. Murea, but subsequently they withdrew it all of the sudden.

The Chamber of Public Notaries had concluded after its own investigation, that Livia Alexander was not guilty.

In all criminal cases, and especially in the civil ones, in which Dragoş Rişcanu had been seeking to restore his right as owner of his own property, there have been countless postponements so that the case remained unsolved. Meanwhile, Dr. Adrian Murea has tried a new science-finction type of maneuver.

Obscure maneuvers Noticing that he could not sell the property

whose owner he had fraudulently become, "Dr. MAI" simulated the conclusion of a fake loan contract with Ioana Simona Diaconescu, dwelling in 17, Schitu Măgureanu Street, ap. 10, District 1. The retired old woman, who could barely make it to the next day, would have lended the surgeon an amount of 250.000 USD. Moreover, because he had not returned the money, six months later she addressed

Page 68: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

132 MICROSOFT

the courts. At the first hearing, the debtor, by defending lawyer Calina Terzi, admitted to the debt without protesting in any way, the decision concerning the refund remaining irrevocable. In late April 2006, Bucharest District 1 Court authorized forced execution on the property at 47, Barbu Delavrancea Street, in favor of loaner Diaconescu, although the house was in dispute because of the way it had fraudulently become property of Dr.MAI. The real estate network`s intention was clear, namely to dispose of the stolen property as soon as possible, such as to further complicate the situation. This mafia`s lawyers are well aware of the fact that to suspend the forced execution, the solicitant must make a deposit of 10% of the property`s value. In other words, the owner who has been robbed is forced by law to pay even more money because of a crooked justice and an absurd legislation.

It should also be mentioned that, in 2000, another loan contract was concluded, - perhaps also fictional - this time between Dr. Adrian Murea and Elena Diaconescu, living at the same address – 17, Schitu Măgureanu Street - with Simona Ileana, his relative. This time, "Dr. MAI" has lent the woman the amount of USD 50.000, while she pledged her own apartment in return.

(Following that, Chief Commissioner Surgeon Adrian Murea has once more tried to dispose of the property, but things did not work quite as expected.)

Mafia tentacles On January 25, 2006, this shameless real

estate theft cause was declined by the DNA, but the

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 133

institution`s prosecutors were strangely in no rush to complete the investigations. Meanwhile, in order to recover his property, Rişcanu has been trying to get the cause to be prosecuted under the civil law – this being suspended – but he is always deferred. The pretext is that the Prosecutor`s Office is expected to issue an address proving that criminal investigations have also been started against notary Livia Alexandru. Taking into account the damage suffered, the Civil Procedure Code contains a regulation according to which the court may hear such a case under civil law regulations, but everyone seems to ignore it. In this case, we are entitled to believe that tentacles of the real estate scams network stretch as far as the Romanian Justice, not to mention the criminal investigation authorities, namely the Police and the Prosecutor`s Office.

Joseph Stark, international criminal This character`s name is well known in the

U.S., Romania and other countries for all sorts of scams, from defrauding many citizens who wanted to work abroad and frauds involving banking documents issued by fictitious banks, to theft and successive sale of properties of great value, also based on false documents. In 1981, he served time in prison for aggravated theft. In May 1997, he also served a sentence of two years, and then came back in force. According to the prosecution indictment, being recidivist, he also received four years imprisonment for offenses under Art. 215 Cp” - Fraud. On 29/07/2003, provisional arrest was ordered in absentia, and the order was prolonged by

Page 69: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

134 MICROSOFT

successive conclusion until 25/03/2004. Before the police put out an APB on him, Stark managed to steal a piece of land in Primăverii neighborhood right from HM King Mihai I himself.

In 2003, the FBI addressed a request to the Romanian Police, bringing to the attention of our authorities that citizen Joseph Stark was being pursued in the U.S. for frauds involving works of art. At that time, the swindler lived in Cotroceni neighborhood. After a stakeout of several weeks, his house was searched and several fake stamps, passports, forged powers of attorney acknowledged by notaries and sale-purchase agreements concerning some properties in Bucharest were found in his dishwasher. He was taken into police custody and required to give a statement, but this experienced, wicked-minded individual refused, citing lack of defense. And as his lawyer was, allegedly, in Braşov, he was released after about three hours by the nice police officers and was to return the following the day together with his defending lawyer.

As was expected, the man disappeared without a trace. Some time has passed until Stark was finally identified and detained at Borş border crossing point, where, late last year, he was arrested and handcuffed.

Doctor Death (Article published in ZIUA on August 30, 2006) Col. Dr. Adrian Murea, from the Emergency

Hospital of the Ministry of Interior "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota”, has done real estate business with two

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 135

patients suffering from cancer. They died two weeks after their identity was used in the theft of two buildings. The evil character in the white medical gown has abused his own child and mother and then stolen his father-in-law`s car. Being protected by influential persons in the Romanian Police and the Prosecutor's Office, it has been years now since the swindler in the Ministry of Interior continues to drive a Mercedes and laugh the injured parties in their faces. Murea lives in a house of protocol of the RA-APPS (Self-governing Department for Administration of the State Heritage and Protocol) although he owns an apartment of four rooms. Even though suspected of mental instability, the colonel is ORNISS (National Registry Office for Classified Information)-attested, having access to state and military secrets. "Dr. Death" has been cleared on every occasion despite all investigations initiated by various Prosecutors' Offices who later disposed “not to take legal action (NUP)” against him. On the first place on the list of his protectors is prosecutor Alexandra Mihaela Şinc, from the Prosecutor's Office within the High Court of Cassation and Justice of Romania.

ZIUA focused in the article "The network of

the dying" - on August 15 2006 - on one of the real estate mafias in Romania, where "Dr. MAI" has major implications. Meanwhile we have continued our investigations, being able to present to the public opinion another series of data and other evidence which proves - unquestionably – that the place of Adrian Murea is not in the public life, but somewhere behind bars. Also, in a normal country, its protectors

Page 70: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

136 MICROSOFT

should keep him company. We mention that the real estate mafia to which we refer will not be fully exposed, due to the large volume of information, testimonies, evidence, data and evidence which we have, in the network activity being involved over a hundred people. The number of properties on which this network (in our opinion the most extensive acting in Romania) made its eyes rises to more than 115 buildings. The ones who lose are the Romanian citizens in the country and abroad, but especially the Romanian state, which is the owner of properties not claimed by the former owners, grabbed by the mafia with false documents. Despite all the evidence which confirms what we've said until now, our famous Prosecutor managed to identify only one blamed in the person of Joseph Stark, or on his baptism name Enel Joseph Stark. And since his arrest have past more than three years, while conjugate efforts were made to cover up the criminal acts, waiting for then to become prescribed.

First dying, real estate broker In the article "The network of the dying" we

reveal to the readers, from data obtained indirectly from the “innocent” Public Ministry - Prosecutor's Office near the High Court of Cassation and Justice, how the property from Bucharest, 39 Kiseleff Street, District 1 was stolen. Through false notary documents, issued by a notary from USA which does not exist, the empowered Stefan Gavrila has sold the property of four heirs from abroad to the company of a person from Iraq. About Ihab F. Ahbed, the Romanian authorities do not know anything since

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 137

1997, when he entered the country. In the same day, and at the same public notary – Livia Alexandru, the property was sold by the Arab to Joseph Stark; the latter became, ostensibly, good faith buyer.

But, at the signing date of the sale-purchase contract, Gavrila was in terminal phase, suffering from neoplasm, after being the patient of "Doctor Death", at the MAI Hospital. Some time before, as it was declared by Murea’s former concubine, an outrageous act has happened, when the old man has checked in the hospital. Because Gavrila did not have any money to give to the colonel who took care of him, he was transported home with his vehicle, taking some painting from his wall. Two weeks after the identity of the 75 years old person was used to accomplish the fraudulent transaction, he died, unconscious of what happened.

Cheating made by a colonel and doctor in the

Ministry of Interior With just two days before the legalization of

the notary documents regarding the theft of the property in 39 Kiseleff Street, “Dr. MAI” has committed another cheat. He has signed, this time having the so-called quality of empowered of the heir Graziela Wagner from America, a contract through which he sold to Doina Dumitrescu the property from 75 Emanoil Porumbaru (former Campia Turzii). The documents were made also at the Livia Alexandru’s office, against which, not even until today was started any investigation by the proper authorities. The empowerment used by Murea, issued by the public notary Antonio Martinez from New York, USA,

Page 71: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

138 MICROSOFT

was also false, the notary being inexistent. Also in this scam, the innocent prosecutor

Alexandra Mihaela Sinc did not manage to establish the exact contribution of “Dr. MAI” in this crime, disposing NUP (no reason to start criminal investigation) in his case. It is to be mentioned that Alexandra is the daughter of public notary Alexandru Basarab Sinc, spokesperson of the National Chamber of Public Notaries in Romania. Character involved in legalizing of sale-purchase contracts through middle man, of a property located in 12 Emanoil Porumbaru Street. This transaction was planned by another real estate network, coordinated by the couple Anton Stan and Carmen Anghel, about who ZIUA wrote on 30.07.2005 and 7.09.2006.

Second dying, real estate broker In 2003, Dragos Riscanu noticed that he is no

longer owner of the house from 47 Barbu Delavrancea, which he purchased with legal documents from the former owner. The new owner: no other than “Doctor Death”. From the file, it came out that Riscanu, when he was in USA, has empowered Stefan Macovei to sell the property. That document was issued at the public notary Helene Nilson, Richmond Department, New York State, USA. After that, Macovei – suffering from neoplasm, in terminal phase, was not-transportable, semi-consciousness and on morphine – sold the house to his doctor, Adrian Murea, that took care of his medical status. Care so good, that the old men died two weeks later, just like Stefan Macovei. The false sale-purchase documents were also authenticated at

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 139

the notary Livia Alexandru. Later on, it was proven that the American

document was a false, no notary by the name of Helene Nilson exists on the USA territory, not even a Richmond Department in the New York State. Also, the owner Riscanu has proved that he did not cross the ocean for the last five years. Even in this situation, the same blind prosecutor Sinc could not be held responsible for complicity with “Doctor Death” in this business. This time, disposed the segregation of the cause, to stall time and escape the liability. Not even against the notary Livia Alexandru could not been taken any actions, because Ministry of Justice did not give its consent (if someone ask for it) for her research. This thing did not happen, which is weird, not even until today.

Murea never wanted the child Nicoleta Mirela Nunweiler, daughter of the

former football player Lica Nunweiler, has known “Doctor Death” from her childhood, but her intimate relationship with him has begun in 1998. The concubinage act was held later in an apartment in Intr. Av. Theodor Iliescu no. 72, state protocol house illegally owned by Murea’s father Victor, because he already owned a four rooms apartment, personal property, in str Turda nr. 94 B, floor 1, AP 5.

The result of the relationship between the two of them is the child Andrei Nicolas Murea Nunweiler. “Dr. MAI” recognized his son 15 days after his birth, because he never wanted the child. The relationship between the two of them has ended in December 2001, after the death of Victor Murea, former ministry

Page 72: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

140 MICROSOFT

of petrol on gas during the communists, after that being prefect of Buzau and Mayor of Tg. Jiu, being very close to Ion Iliescu.

Not long ago, “Doctor Death” made an exchange with Ioana Moldovan, known actress which flirts with the television. For the two rooms from 72 Av Thedor Iliescu has received three rooms and a bonus of 15.000 EUR. Moldovan needed Murea’s apartment, because she already bought another apartment in the same property and wanted to complete the property. It would not be excluded that in the meantime, both to be bought - with the complicity of the RA Apps - the two houses at derisory prices.

A monster in white gown We will now pass the word to Mirela

Nunweiler, which confessed to ZIUA reporters: "We have refurbished the apartment from

Turda Street from my money - 16.000 USD – planning to move there, because in Intr. Av. Iliescu the dampness reached half of the walls. On 28 august 2001, my father gave Adrian the right to drive his car, Mercedes E Classe, valued at 30.000 EUR. The only condition imposed by my father was that the car to be parked each night in our garage, because we lived on the same street and Murea did not had a garage. On 29 March 2002, after not parking the car in the garage one night before, Adrian told my sister that the Mercedes was stolen and that we have to report the incident to the Police. In the same day, around lunch, I was kicked out of his house with the Police, on the reason that I had

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 141

no right to live there. I had no choice; I took my child and went to my father. I want to tell you that Adrian has always treated badly his son. When he cried, Adrian ignite all four meshes of stove and held the child above the flame, burning his feet. Other times, Adrian put the child between two big boxes and gave the music to maximum to quiet him. It is clear that the child will turn red and purple and cried as much as he could.”

Thief covered by the Police and Prosecutor Three months after the disappearance of the

car licensed B-74-NEC, a notarial document appeared, legalized by the same notary, Livia Alexandru, through which Lica Nunweiler sold the Mercedes to “Doctor Death”. Through the complicity of some employees from the Police located at Logofat Udriste Street, the car was licensed with the number B-90-AVM (Adrian Victor Murea). As of the false signing of the sale-purchase contract, the lawful owner of the Mercedes was checked in the Floreasca Emergency Hospital, following a crisis of renal colic.

After a “competent” investigation of the problem, the Prosecutor considers that there is no sufficient evidence to start a criminal investigation of “Dr. MAI”, leaving him free. Furthermore, the car is at one time confiscated at Bors customs, when some persons tried to take it out of the country. Quite paradoxically, the Mercedes is returned to Adrian Murea and not to the lawful owner Lica Nunweiler. Subsequently, all devoid of imagination, "Dr Death" has manufactured another license plate (B-83-AVM),

Page 73: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

142 MICROSOFT

to lose track of the car. Not even until this moment, there is no accusation on Murea regarding the theft of the car through false and use of false. However, even if the Mercedes it is still listed as stolen, “Dr. MAI” goes to work with the car, based on a statement on his own responsibility given to the Police.

Mentally unstable, but holder of ORNISS

certificate “Since he kicked us out of the house, he did

not come to see his child, but to beat me, confesses Nicoleta Mirela Nunweiler. Until now I have tens of medico-legal certificates, which I submitted to the Prosecutor and judges, but all was for nothing. Adrian is well protected by the Romanian Justice. He beat me on the street, in the market, in the stores, with or without witnesses. For the last three years, no one wants to make light in this case. At one point, he took a medical certificate, which confirms the fact that he had a moment of lost which lasted three months. Certificate which, in reality, was bringing to his house, after he made a phone call. Based on this forgery he escaped all the accusations regarding the harm which was brought to me. I cannot imagine how men like him, with which I had the bad luck of getting involved with, can be a colonel at the Ministry of Internal and owner of ORNISS certificate”.

To clarify those who are not specialists, some specifications are imposed. The access to classified information is allowed to some persons who have a security certificate or access authorization. According to the legislation, ORNISS issues such

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 143

documents, based on complete investigations, which include: applicant biography, loyalty, habits, relations and discretion, professional and social conduct, as well as the concept and the way of life of the husband/wife of the person who apply for a ORNISS certificate. The comments regarding the method through which “Dr. MAI” has obtained these “distinctions” are in vain.

Another patient dead in suspicious conditions “Doctor Death” had in his care an old lady

without relatives, that lived on the Lacul Tei Street, in a three rooms apartment. She was a special lady, which had in possession many high value goods. Nicoleta Mirela Nunweiler took her food on a weekly basis, the MAI colonel hoping that the woman will die soon and he will remain owner over her possessions. The problem was that the old lady did not die, to Murea’s despair. “Adrian thought for a while to prepare the woman a cocktail – as he called it – to give her a hand, told us the mother of the child. He threatened me for two years with similar cases. He said that someone will sing me on the street or at the market, because he does not get his hands dirty, and after six hours I will suffer a heart attack and die. When I did not take care of the old woman any more, after Adrian kicked me out of the house, the woman died six months later of heart attack. I cannot remember her name, but this can be found out easily as I know the exact address where she lived until the last moment of her life”.

Page 74: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

ANNEX 7 MINISTRY OF ADMINISTRATION AND INTERIOR INFORMATION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTORATE PUBLIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE Bucharest, November 6, 2006 To: ZIUA daily Attention of: Editor Dan Coste Following "Doctor Death" article published in

ZIUA on August 31 2006, the Public Communication Service of the Ministry of Administration and Interior is empowered to state the following:

Both the issues raised in the aforementioned

article and your referral addressed to the Ministry of Administration and Interior were subject to investigations carried out by representatives of the General Directorate for Control of MAI. Their final result was the conclusion that Dr. Adrian Murea - surgeon at "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota" Hospital has not deviated from professional ethics, carrying out his assignments under the internal rules in force.

Page 75: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

146 MICROSOFT

In addition, concerning the allegations made against him, since the Prosecutor's Office within the High Court of Cassation and Justice and the Prosecutor's Office within Bucharest Court conducted researches and ordered the release from criminal prosecution and, respectively, to drop the criminal charges, we do not have the competence, as an institution, to re-examine them...

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC

COMMUNICATION Signed unreadable

CUPRINS

Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited: ................. 3

FOREWORD ........................................................... 5

CHAPTER I ............................................................11 If You Are Not Part of the Solution, You Are Part of the Problem ............................................................11 The Wicked Protocol ............................................. 12 Secret Partnership................................................. 17 Strategic, Omnipotent Arbiter of the Romanian IT Market.................................................................... 21

CHAPTER II .......................................................... 29 How to Die with Justice on Your Side .................... 29 The Bewilderments of an Investigative Journalist, an Endangered Occupation in Romania..................... 33 Software Piracy ..................................................... 34 PHARE funds used for the theft ............................ 35 A Coffee Chat ........................................................ 36 Corruption at High Levels ...................................... 36 Statements and expertises .................................... 37

CHAPTER III ......................................................... 41 Capo di Tutti Capi.................................................. 41 IT Pirates` Accomplices......................................... 45 Who is OLAF and What Does it Want................... 47 The Thief Shouts “Thieves!” .................................. 48 How to Silence an Inconvenient Journalist............ 50

Page 76: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

148 MICROSOFT

CHAPTER IV ......................................................... 55 Copyrights Violated on a Daily Basis..................... 55 Mail Manipulation .................................................. 59 Answer from Microsoft Romania ........................... 61

CHAPTER V .......................................................... 65 Shameless Ministerial Lies.................................... 65 The True Face of Microsoft ................................... 67

CHAPTER VI ......................................................... 75 Microsoft in Quotations.......................................... 75 Last-Minute Conclusions ....................................... 78 Metamorphosis of Black into White ....................... 81 The Journalistic Investigation Continues ............... 82

ANNEXES ............................................................. 85

ANNEX 1 ............................................................... 87 ACTION PLAN of the Central Operative Group .... 87 Intelligence Services rank number three after the American and the British........................................ 90 Predoiu is recruiting secret agents ........................ 91 Lustration, the only solution................................... 92 Intelligence services that we are proud of ............. 93

ANNEX 2 ............................................................... 95 TECHNICAL-SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION - ORDA nr. 3973/31.01.2005............................................... 95 A lot of expert reports and examinations ............... 96 Ill-will, obscure interests, or just incompetence? . 104

ANNEX 3 ..............................................................113

ANNEX 3’ .............................................................115

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 149

ANNEX 4 ..............................................................117

ANNEX 5 ..............................................................119

ANNEX 6 ............................................................. 121 Network of the dying............................................ 121 Doctor Death ....................................................... 134

ANNEX 7 ............................................................. 145

Page 77: Microsoft - The Guardian Angel - WordPress.com · 2010. 8. 13. · THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 13 book. Nevertheless, things are not like that, as we shall see. Especially because Senator

150 MICROSOFT

Dan COSTE – Investigation Reporter Professional experience: 20 yrs investigation

journalism, analysis, news. Written media journalist after 1990, Member of the International Federation of Journalists, Founding Member of the Association of Journalists Class ’90.

1990 – main editor “Dreptatea”; 1991 – editor “Romania Libera”; 1992 – editor “Tinerama”; 2002 – special reporter ‘Ziua”; 2008 – chief editor social dept. “UNU”; 2009 – special investigation reporter “Cotidianul”; 2010 – investigation media freelancer. Collaborator and coordinator of “Timpul Capitalei”,

“Realitatea Românească”, “Bucureşti”, “SenzaŃii Tari”, “Ea despre Ea”, “Ion Cristoiu şi Max Bănush vă recomandă”, “Curentul”, “Revista culinară”, “Povestiri pentru Acasă”, “Evenimentul zilei”, “România Express”, “Reporter special”, "Incisiv de Prahova”, radio “Tinerama”, "Q Mamagazine", "Ziarul de InvestigaŃii", "AgenŃia de InvestigaŃii Media" etc.

Author of more than 60 detective and adventure novels,

dozens of educational brochures, “Counterfeiting in Romania” (coordinator, 3 volumes), “The Consumers’ Guide”, “Cursed Flight – Kill In The Name of Allah!” (first book published after 9.11.2001 in Romania), etc.

OLAF training in Brussels, February 2007. [email protected]