Călin Georgescu arrested in early hours with huge police force

Călin Georgescu, the independent who won the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election before the vote was annulled, was stopped in traffic before 7am on Monday near a swimming pool in Otopeni and taken to his house in Mogoșoaia while prosecutors searched it.

Officers of the organised-crime and terrorism directorate (DIICOT) and the national police executed five home-search warrants in Bucharest, Mogoșoaia, Ciolpani and Buftea.

Masked officers were filmed at the property. According to news outlet Gandul , €5,000 was found in his house.

Georgescu was then driven to DIICOT headquarters for questioning.

Supporters gathered outside and gendarmes put up barriers.

One man with a telescopic baton was led away. By late morning the agency had not announced a formal arrest or a preventive measure.

The pro-Russian Călin Georgescu, the Kremlin’s Manchurian candidate in Romania’s 2024 presidential election, was taken into custody this morning. He is accused of fraud and of forming an organized criminal group that received more than €1 million from various Russian citizens. pic.twitter.com/72fO5S7o76

— Daractenus (@Daractenus) September 21, 2026

The file is fraud with particularly serious consequences, in continued form, and forming an organised criminal group.

DIICOT says that in September 2021 two Romanians, aged 64 and 47, and an Italian aged 56 set up a group, led by the 64-year-old Romanian, which operated in Romania and Britain.

They posed as foreign financiers in Romania and Great Britain, and promised large bank loans in return for cash guarantees.

“Thus, according to the roles assumed, the perpetrators acted by misleading and deceiving some Romanian businessmen regarding the possibility of accessing financing from banking financial institutions abroad, the members of the organised crime group having as their objective to obtain the monetary guarantees deposited by the injured persons for accessing the respective loans,” DIICOT claimed.

Businessman Răzvan Leu says he transferred more than €1.1 million as a guarantee for a Swiss credit that never arrived.

Judicial sources name Georgescu as one of the three, with businessman Ionel Rusen, who raised money for the 2024 campaign, and Italian Massimiliano Arena.

Some reports also name Georgescu’s wife, Cristela.

Money from this set up reportedly went to Georgescu’s Presidential campaign

The complaint to DIICOT dates from 2024.

This is Georgescu’s third live criminal file.

One, with former mercenary Horațiu Potra and about 20 others, concerns alleged acts against the constitutional order. On September 9, the Bucharest Court of Appeal held a first hearing. Georgescu did not attend, and the next date is 28 September.

The 2024 presidential first round, which he won on an anti-NATO, anti-aid platform, was cancelled by the constitutional court after the intelligence services alleged a Russian-backed online campaign.

The underlying evidence was never laid out in public in a form that settled the argument.

Georgescu remained popular among voters who treated the annulment as a stitch-up.

Many on the sovereigntist right called Monday’s dawn operation political.

George Simion, whose party absorbed much of that electorate, issued a statement on the searches.

“Any of us could be next. Stop the abuses! Romania is a dictatorship!!!!”, he wrote on Facebook.

COMMENT: Irrespective of what “case” prosecutors bring against Mr Georgescu, there is virtually no way to disguise this as anything other than politically motivated intimidation of a presidential candidate to exclude him from the race, writes @GElefteriu . https://t.co/4SFnqyMaQg

— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) February 26, 2025