Gheorghe-Gabriel Gheorghe, President of Romania’s National Office for Gambling (ONJN), has refused to attend the parliamentary hearings of the IT Committee.
The fallout from Romania’s governance of gambling continues, as Gheorghe did not attend the IT Committee’s hearings on 4 March to explain the ONJN’s regulatory failings.
Grabbing national headlines, Romanian gambling has been rocked by a damning audit of the ONJN by the Court of Accounts (CCR), which revealed tax liabilities of between 3.3 billion and 4.3 billion lei (€630m to €900m/$683m to $983m).
The ONJN has been accused of gross negligence in its governance of Romanian gambling between 2019 and 2023, during which it failed to properly audit the income of licensees and neglected to collect licensing fees and enforce penalties amounting to €20m ($21.7m).
The CCR’s audit deemed the ONJN’s failings severe enough to warrant a criminal investigation, a matter to be decided by the government.
The backlash saw the Romanian Union Party (USR) demand that ONJN leadership provide an explanation to Parliament, led by USR Senator Ciprian Rus, Chair of the IT Committee.
Gheorghe turned down Senator Rus’s request, questioning the USR Party’s authority to summon a regulatory agency for a hearing.
The President stated that the USR Party did not understand the complexity of the report’s findings, adding that he had already applied internal measures at the ONJN following the Court of Accounts audit.
Instead, Gheorghe requested that Parliament reschedule the hearing and promised to provide a detailed response explaining the failings and outlining corrective measures.
The audit did not place any direct blame on Gheorghe, who took leadership of the ONJN in November 2023, becoming the Office’s fifth president since 2018.
The ONJN maintains that the failures were due to outdated IT systems, which were required to apply year-on-year changes to taxes, licensing, and authorisation fees for Romanian gambling licences. However, the CCR report stated that maintaining IT systems and terminals was a mandatory duty of the regulator.
The USR Party has been accused of exploiting the CCR’s audit to advance its gambling agenda, which seeks to dissolve the ONJN and replace it with the National Bank and the Tax Authority (ANAF).
Last week, USR Party ministers promoted a new bill to impose a cap on gambling expenditure for both online and retail accounts, limiting it to 10% of a customer’s monthly income.
Senator Rus responded: “ONJN is subordinate to the Romanian Government and, according to the Constitution and the laws in force, is accountable to parliamentary control. However, it seems that President Gheorghe Gabriel Gheorghe is not aware of this.”
He added that the Office is subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, which is accountable to the Government and, in turn, to parliamentary control.
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