BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Romania’s top court gave former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase a two-year jail sentence for corruption yesterday, a landmark conviction in the graft-prone European Union country that has prosecuted few senior officials.

Adrian Nastase

Nastase would be the first former prime minister to be sent to jail since the fall of communism in 1989. He remains free pending an appeal.

Prosecutors had said the state budget lost $2 million in 2004 when profits from an event organised by a state construction watchdog were used to finance Nastase’s campaign for the presidency. Nastase lost the election to Traian Basescu, who is still Romania’s president.

Nastase has denied any wrongdoing and blamed the prosecution on politics.
“In time it will be shown that this entire process had political motivations behind it,” Nastase told a news conference. “It is an attempt to keep me sidelined from the public life.”

The EU has repeatedly raised concerns about a failure to tackle corruption in Romania and neighbouring Bulgaria, its two newest and poorest members which have been blocked from joining the passport-free Schengen zone over the issue.

Romania is perceived as the third most corrupt EU country after Greece and Bulgaria, according to corruption watchdog Trans-parency International.