What the newspapers say: October 10, 2008

Romanian newspapers on Friday write about the recent visit of top government officials to Italy, a visit which focused on plenty of issues and produced a few surprises. One newspaper tries to find who benefits from a bill passed by the Parliament this week which makes it impossible for a property confiscated by the communist regime to be given back to its rightful owner. And another newspaper writes that the Romanian national football team coach faces justice troubles just as he prepares for a key match against France.

Gandul covers the visit Romanian government officials led by PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu paid to Italy for a first inter-governmental session due to discuss the image of Romania in that country, where a large community of Romanians is living. But Tariceanu was accompanied by no less than nine ministers because the talks touched lots of other issues, from agriculture to migration to police cooperation, the paper writes.

It reports that Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi tried to underline the merits of honest Romanians living in Italy and that one should not put too much emphasis on individual crimes committed by some Romanians. Still, he was just as direct when talking about moves to repatriate criminals, who can be send to their home country without their acceptance.

The paper notes that Berlusconi also wished success to Tariceanu’s Liberals in the general elections due to take place in Romania this fall and lauded Tariceanu’s uneasy government over the past years.

Cotidianul focuses on a bill recently passed by Romanian MPs which makes it impossible for properties nationalized under the communist regime to be given back to their rightful owners. According to the paper, the key to the bill, known as the „Voiculescu law”, was to preserve the properties obtained in illegal or marginally legal ways by the political clientele of parties of all colors – mainly the Social Democrats, the far-right Greater Romania Party and initiator Dan Voiculescu’s own Conservative Party.

According to the paper, political VIPs bought such houses at symbolic prices throughout the years. They are all either members of the communist regime or prominent officials of the political leadership that followed the fall of communism. The paper lists a series of such officials based on previous official listings or on lists published by associations of house owners.

Meanwhile, Evenimentul Zilei turns its attention to the troubles Romanian national football team coach Victor Piturca is facing with the Romanian justice prior to the key match Romania has against France this weekend. According to the paper, Piturca was officially charged by anti-graft prosecutors for favoring the alleged criminal in a case in which Gigi Becali – a controversial businessman, politician, and owner of Bucharest football club Steaua – is charged with graft.

Piturca is accused of helping Becali get rid of prosecutors’ accusations in the case in which Becali’s crony Teia Sponte was found carrying 1.7 million euro in a luggage, money which was allegedly aimed to be given to players of a rival club. According to the paper, Piturca allegedly said that the money was in fact destined for the purchase of a plot of land.

And Cotidianul tells the story of an Irish man who lost his wife in the last bloody attack of the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) in Northern Ireland. Following the death of his wife, Kevin Skelton continued the charity activities his wife was pursuing in Romania. And in Romania he met Maria, the mother of a girl he wanted to adopt – and beside Maria he managed to find a cure to his sorrow.