Romania’s Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP) has confirmed that a criminal complaint against President Nicușor Dan was filed with the General Prosecutor’s Office in April 2025.
It concerned suspected irregularities in the financing of his 2025 presidential campaign,
The investigation, though, is stalled due to his presidential immunity.
The confirmation was provided earlier this week by AEP president Adrian Țuțuianu in response to a public information request.
Țuțuianu stated that the complaint was submitted in April 2025 on grounds of reasonable suspicions of offences under Law 334/2006 governing the financing of electoral campaigns.
He added that progress is impossible because “the President of the country has immunity for the duration of his mandate”.
On the administrative front, the AEP rejected Dan’s preliminary complaint in December 2025 over the partial non-reimbursement of campaign expenses and court action is now awaited.
The AEP’s inspection of Dan’s campaign accounts as an independent candidate highlighted concerns over online donations processed through the Stripe platform in the pre-campaign period, totalling more than 3 million lei (approximately €590,000).
Authorities questioned whether these sums were properly declared or correctly routed through the officially notified account for diaspora contributions.
The AEP noted that Stripe retains commissions and it raised “reasonable suspicions” that some sums were used from bank accounts other than the one officially notified to the authority for diaspora financing.
The campaign team argued that the arrangement complied with the law, as pre-campaign funds could cover early costs with any balance transferred to the official account before the campaign concluded.
The authority also invalidated 870,384.10 lei (around €171,000) in claimed expenses, including sociological research carried out outside the official campaign timeframe and propaganda materials from suppliers without valid contracts with the candidate.
This led to only partial reimbursement: From total reported spending of approximately 61 million lei (€11.9 million) across both rounds of the May 2025 rerun election – supported by 57.3 million lei (€11.2 million) to 58.5 million lei (€11.4 million) in personal loans and 2.5 million (€200,000) to 3.6 million lei (€710,000) in donations.
The AEP returned about 60 million lei, (€11.7 million) resulting in a shortfall of around 1 million lei (€196,000).
Following his inauguration, Dan indicated in late 2025 that he would challenge the AEP in court over the unreimbursed amount.
In response to the latest coverage, he today characterised the reports as old news from April 2025.
He criticised the AEP for failing to grasp online donation processes, while similar issues in his 2016 and 2020 Bucharest mayoral campaigns were overturned on appeal.
In posts on Facebook and X today, he accused the AEP of bias and selective enforcement, pointing out that the same authority had raised no comparable objections to the financing of right-wing candidate Călin Georgescu’s 2024 campaign.
Dan, the centrist independent who prevailed over right-wing candidate George Simion in the May 2025 run-off after the Constitutional Court annulled the 2024 vote due to alleged but unproven foreign meddling, holds office until 2030.
Presidential immunity bars criminal proceedings without impeachment, a process requiring substantial parliamentary support under the Constitution.
The revival of the issue, prompted by Țuțuianu’s statement, has prompted renewed discussion in Bucharest.
Gândul published a chronology yesterday referencing its 2025 reporting on “faceless donors” and the ongoing absence of full public disclosure for contributions exceeding the 40,500 lei naming threshold.
No fresh evidence has appeared beyond the original findings.
Dan repeatedly promised greater transparency but has never released a full names list, citing data-protection rules when the donations were later recorded in his asset declaration at the National Integrity Agency (ANI).
There is “absolutely no evidence” of Russian interference in Romania’s annulled 2024 elections. https://t.co/LH2PkGkjhs
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) December 6, 2025
