Romanian House of Deputies speaker Adrian Nastase invited a handful of journalists to visit his apartment in Bucharest on Saturday, in an effort to boost his image following graft allegations surrounding his real estate properties.

The invitation came as he has been opposing prosecutors’ moves over the last several weeks to search his house in Zambaccian, which the journalists now had the opportunity to visit.

The ex-prime minister offered journalists a glimpse of his collection of paintings, trying to make clear that most of them were fakes or replicas of famous works. He also said that Oriental art objects, mostly broght from China, were inherited from his father-in-law, a former Communist official who served as Ambassador to Beijing for a long time.

According to his latest wealth statement, the impressive number of paintings in Nastase’s house was not worth more than several tens of thousands of dollars.

His intervention came a day after his Social Democratic Party (PSD) received a delegation of German socialists in Bucharest. The Germans were extremely critical of Nastase’s rejection of a house search and dismissed his claims that prosecutors’ moves against him were nothing but a "witch hunt".