Sorin Alexandres-cu, the general manager of Antena TV Group, was placed on preventive arrest for twenty nine days, at the end of last week, following a ruling of the judges of the 1st district of Bucharest, upon the proposal of the prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Department, which is indicting him in case of blackmail against cable company RCS/RDS, which also involves the president of the Professional Football League, Dumitru Dragomir.

The scandal of the detainment and arrest of the general manager of Antena 1 has started off lots of talk, given the political and business connections of the owner of Antena TV, Dan Voiculescu.

Some people claim that the National Anticorruption Department (DNA) was not habilitated to investigate Sorin Alexandrescu for blackmail, because the DNA is not habilitated by law to investigate this type of cases.

"If the DNA also handles blackmail offenses, then what is the General Prosecutor's Office left with?", political sources told us.

Perhaps blackmail is part of the "et. al" mentioned at the end of the document that describes the attributions of the DNA, but that would mean it can handle anything else (see box).

If that is the case, that that also means that "the blackmail conducted by Sorin Alexandrescu" actually represents one "medium or major corruption act", because those are what the DNA deals with.

Another possibility, of course, is that aside from the blackmail, the case also contains facts which for one reason or another are not being made public.

Lawyer Gheorghe Piperea said: "Simple blackmail is not a corruption crime. The National Anticorruption Department is expanding its attributions without any regulation which allows it to do so. From what I've learned, a negotiation took place between the two, who are both operating in the private sector, and we all know that sometim