Magistrates of the Court of Appeal partly upheld the call of the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIJM) by which it obliges the Presidency to provide information about the persons decorated with state awards by the presidents of the country from 2001 to present and acts by which the heads of state rejected candidacies of judges proposed for promotion or appointment.

The judges accepted the first point and rejected the second. Thus, the Presidency would provide information about the persons decorated with state awards. The decision was dictated after in November 2015,  Buiucani Court of the capital rejected the action of CIJM.

These two requests for information were sent to the Presidency in May, 2015. In the first request, CIJM asked biographies of people who have been decorated from 2001 to 2015 with state awards: the Order of the Republic, Order of Honor, the Order of Labor Glory, Order Civic Merit and the Order Stefan cel Mare, and details about specific merits of each individual to the state. The Presidency has refused to provide this information on grounds of personal data protection.  

In the second request, the journalists of the Centre asked all documents sent by the heads of state during 2001-2015 to the Superior Council of Magistracy, by which the candidates for the office of judge, chairman or deputy chairman of courts and instances who were supposed to be promoted at the courts of appeal, were rejected. This time, representatives of the Presidency invoked reasons of personal data protection again.

Journalists from the Center for Investigative Journalism acquired and analyzed documents on magistrates’ promotion.  We got convinced that the documents contain information of public interest and were used in the investigation "Judges with 'nine lives'."

President of the judicial staff was Nina Cernat, who featured in a survey conducted several years ago by the Center for Investigative Journalism. Following that article, former president of the Civil and Administrative Board of the Supreme Court of Justice found herself in the middle of a media scandal. Reporters revealed in 2012 that the judge lives in a luxury house in the capital, registered on the name of her mother in law, a retired woman aged 80. The old woman asked the court for damages of tens of millions of lei from the company that built the construction because it has not completed the works on time. Court of Appeal offered 25 million lei as moral and material damage, but the Supreme Court quashed the judgment. Former Minister of Justice Oleg Efrim informed the prosecutors but they refused to start the criminal case.