Romania: top bodyguard was Securitate officer
Lucian Pahonțu has been head of the SPP, the secret service responsible for protecting high-ranking state officials, for over 20 years. Now the investigative news portal Recorder has revealed that he was a member of a unit of the notorious Securitate secret police that was involved in the bloody suppression of protests during the 1989 revolution. President Nicușor Dan has defended Pahonțu, saying "I don’t see what all the scandal is about."
Loyalty instead of a break with the past
According to Deutsche Welle's Romanian service, Pahonțu was protected by the political establishment over all those years:
“The fact that Lucian Pahonțu came straight from the secret police was no secret to any of the [three] presidents he looked after; on the contrary, this appears to have served as a guarantee of his professionalism. His working methods – which he learned at a young age and refined over the course of his long career – convinced every single president that they needed him. The fact that he was allowed to remain in positions at the highest levels of government, where he had access to Romania's most important secrets, shows that lustration was impossible in Romania.”
When conspiracy theories are right
Romania must take action, argues the Hungarian-language website Főtér.ro:
“The Pahonțu affair raises the suspicion that the theory that the secret services pull the strings behind the scenes – often dismissed as a conspiracy theory – is at least to some extent true. From this moment on, Romania has but one task. If it truly wishes to be a European country, a democracy and a state governed by the rule of law, then this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow beyond teenagehood and pass the test of maturity: it must dismantle the behind-the-scenes power of the former Securitate.”
Former secret service members weeded out elsewhere
In other countries it would be unthinkable for a former communist secret service officer to hold such a high-ranking post, Hotnews laments:
“In countries where high-ranking politicians do not allow themselves to be co-opted by militarised services, what is happening in Romania would be unimaginable. Thirty-five years after the collapse of communism, neither in Germany nor in Poland does an officer from the Stasi or the former Polish secret service hold a top post at such a crucial agency. ... Public confidence in the security forces is apparently not a matter of importance for Nicușor Dan in 2026, as his statement makes clear.”