Prosecutors said earlier that they had raided 47 addresses of Georgescu’s associates as part of an investigation into alleged offences including “establishing an organisation with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character” and “false statements” regarding campaign financing.
Romanian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Călin Georgescu, the far-right, Moscow-friendly populist who surged from almost nowhere to win the first round of the country’s cancelled presidential election last year.
The announcement of the investigation covering a number of separate accusations took place after Georgescu, 62, was stopped by police in Bucharest traffic on Wednesday as he was about to submit his candidacy for a rerun of the election, which is scheduled for May.
Amid claims of “massive” social media promotion, Georgescu, who was polling in single digits before the ballot and declared zero campaign spending, has also denied any wrongdoing and called the annulment a “formalised coup d’etat”.
“The communist Bolshevik system is continuing its heinous abuse,” Georgescu added, accusing the Romanian authorities of seeking to “invent evidence to justify stealing the election and to do anything in their efforts to block a new candidacy from me”.
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