AUDIO Interview US Ambassador to Bucharest Mark Gitenstein says he fully supports authorities' attempts to solve National Integrity Agency issue

Luni, 26 aprilie 2010, 18:13 English | Top News

The US Embassy to Bucharest is concerned about transparency and rule of law issues "because we have entities and citizens who are active in Romania in a number of respects (...) and they want to know that the rule of law will be applied to them and all Romanians and because we also invested in the future of Romania as a free market and as a functioning democracy", said US Ambassador to Bucharest Mark Gitenstein in the Monday Talk - a HotNews.ro-RFI show by journalist Dan Tapalaga.

"The notion that financial statements" of public officials in Romania, which have been monitored by the National Integrity Agency - ANI, "can just stay in the agency and not be publicly disclosed as somehow this would be a violation of privacy is troublesome to me", Gitenstein said. He spoke of a recent decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court that stripped ANI, a key body monitoring the wealth of Romanian public officials, of its most important tasks, including that of having wealth and interest statements made public.

Listen to the audio interview