A Romanian court has sentenced 3 Israelis to suspended prison sentences after convicting them of trying to threaten a prominent prosecutor and former head of the country's anti-corruption body.
Last Thursday, it issued a ruling announced on Monday, which sentenced Dan Zorella and Avi Janos, the two former Israeli intelligence officers and co-founders of the security company "Black Cube", as well as employee Gal Varchi, to two years and 11 months in prison, with a suspended sentence.
The decision of this court in Bucharest came after the defendants in the case - who were being tried in absentia for being outside Romania - reached an agreement with the public prosecutor.
The three Israelis were accused of creating a group to practice "organized crime" in 2016 targeting Prosecutor Laura Kovici, who was then head of the Anti-Corruption Commission, and who oversaw extensive investigations that included prominent figures in Romania.
Kovici left her post in 2019 to take over the newly created position of attorney general for the European Union.
Two lower-level Black Cube employees were also given suspended prison sentences in the same case in 2016 and 2017.
At that time, Zorella (a former intelligence officer) told the Israeli investigators - who were cooperating with their Romanian counterparts - that he had ordered the two people to hack Kovici's email in order to find data that could be used to blackmail her.
The authorities arrested these two people in Bucharest before they could complete their mission.
And last year, Romanian authorities began, as part of this wide-ranging case, a prosecution against the former Romanian secret agent Daniel Dragomir, who allegedly contacted one of the founders of "Black Cube" and paid him 135,000 euros for services.
Dragomir fled the country in June 2020 ahead of his indictment in a separate corruption case.
According to local media, an unidentified businessman hired the services of Dragomir, who in turn contacted the Israeli company.
Romania is among the countries of the European Union that suffer from the spread of corruption.