As June local elections are approaching, financial electoral stakes are higher and higher, one newspaper reads on Monday. Elsewhere in the news, former Romanian spies abroad now work in controversial businesses for local tycoons. In the same vein, Health minister Nicolaescu's war against pharmaceutical companies starts to resemble a poker game, where players bluff.
Cotidianul reads about the financial stakes of the upcoming local elections: high campaign prices and huge allocated funds which exceed the legal limit imposed by the state considerably. Thus, most candidates are financially supported by local businessmen with economic interests in city halls.
On the one hand, there are cleaning contracts which exceed one billion euro and naturally attract many contractors ready to do whatever it takes to win public tenders. On the other hand, real estate developers pressure the City Hall and are ready to invest million of euro in electoral campaigns just to endorse the candidate who would favor them.
The newspaper reads that businessmen are currently funding several candidates in order to make sure their interests will be taken into account, whoever wins elections. Naturally there are several local tycoons who are known of funding certain parties.
Moreover, the newspaper investigates where these huge amounts come from and how are the money allocated since there is a legal limit to legal donations or endorsements for candidates. Democrat Liberal Vasile Blaga running for Bucharest mayor says that he cannot evaluate the exact sum of a campaign since costs increase along the way. The newspaper adds that Blaga has an unofficial amount of 10 million euro to cover for his campaign.
Bucharest Liberal candidate Ludovic Orban declared that he will invest as much as he would be able to gather, arguing that he did not plan t