Now the Chamber of Deputies Should Summon Lóci Antal Over Mykonos

The Chamber of Deputies voted on Wednesday to set up an investigative committee to find out who flew by private jet to Mykonos and Nice, and who paid for their trip. The committee's establishment was initiated by the PNL and the USR, and it will consist of twenty-five MPs in proportion to the parliamentary groups' seats, with public sessions and a public final report. According to Diana Stoica, leader of the USR's parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies, the committee must determine who took part in the trips, including on planes chartered by the Nordis Group, who organized and paid for them, how much the flights, accommodation, meals and transfers cost, and what economic interests the organizers, financiers and passengers have.

The press revealed the Mykonos trip in early September; according to the passenger list, thirteen passengers boarded a private jet in Bucharest on 8 July. Among them were Constitutional Court judge Cristian Deliorga, former Prime Minister Victor Ponta, former Labor Minister Petre-Florin Manole, former Health Minister Nicolae Bănicioiu and former Transport Minister Ovidiu Silaghi, Grampet Group owner Gruia Stoica, who had previously been convicted, Bogdan Mîndrescu, CEO of the state company operating Bucharest's airports, and Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) senator István Lóránt Antal.

The Nordis case goes back further: G4Media revealed in 2024 that in May 2022, Marcel Ciolacu, Sorin Grindeanu, Alfred Simonis and Laura Vicol flew to Nice by private jet, paid for by one of the companies of the now-bankrupt Nordis Group.

The Senate had already launched a similar investigation in the autumn, within its constitutional affairs committee, which looked into Deliorga's trip and a meeting between then-Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan and Constitutional Court President Simina Tănăsescu. The committee invited Bolojan and Tănăsescu six times, but neither appeared, while Lóci Antal was not even invited — an investigation about as serious as police, after a bank robbery, only putting out a search notice for the person who fired a shot into the air while ignoring all the other accomplices, as Ugar's Monday article also pointed out. In the end, the Senate investigation failed to establish even what the press had already uncovered. István Lóránt Antal, the only senator among the Mykonos jet's passengers, was never summoned, and his name does not even appear in the summaries of the minutes.

An investigation for the sake of a whitewash

Does it make sense to set up another investigative committee if the previous one didn't even dare question its own colleague? On paper, the Chamber of Deputies committee is stronger, since it will hold public sessions and its mandate also covers financial and economic interests, but the seats will be distributed according to the parliamentary groups' proportions, meaning the majority will belong to the PSD and the AUR. This same PSD–AUR duo divided up the public broadcaster and the Court of Accounts between themselves this week, with no small amount of help from the RMDSZ, while Sorin Grindeanu, chairman of the ruling PSD, was himself on the Nice-bound jet paid for by the Nordis company. It is hard to believe that this very majority will be the one to clarify who flew on whose money, if part of the answer leads straight to their own party chairman.

Meanwhile, the RMDSZ is lucky that no one in the Romanian parliament really cares what a Hungarian senator was doing in Mykonos. Lóránt Antal sat on that plane alongside a Constitutional Court judge, a convicted businessman, former PSD ministers and Ponta. The Senate never asked him what a Transylvanian Hungarian senator was doing at a “working meeting” with American partners on a Greek resort island, paid for by a chamber of commerce, and the RMDSZ did not consider it important to explain either — while the person the Alliance sent to the investigative committee did not attend a single session. If the Chamber of Deputies committee takes its mandate seriously, it should hear István Lóránt Antal among the first witnesses. If it doesn't, Transylvanian Hungarian voters will once again be left without an important piece of information...

Ugar