Though enjoying a certain popularity due to his opposition to Ceaușescu and image as a revolutionary, his political career after 1989 was marked by multiple controversies and scandals. Public opinion regarding his tenure as president is still divided.
Alleged KGB connections Some alleged Iliescu had connections to the
KGB; the allegations continued during 2003–2008, when Russian dissident
Vladimir Bukovsky, who had been granted access to Soviet archives, declared that Iliescu and some of the NSF members were KGB agents, that Iliescu had been in close connection with Mikhail Gorbachev ever since they had allegedly met during Iliescu's stay in Moscow, and that the Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a plot orchestrated by the KGB to regain control of the country's policies (gradually lost under Ceaușescu's rule). The only hard evidence published was a discussion between Gorbachev and Bulgaria's
Aleksandar Lilov from 23 May 1990 (after Iliescu's victory in the 20 May elections) in which Gorbachev said that Iliescu held a "calculated position", and that despite sharing common views with Iliescu, Gorbachev wanted to avoid sharing this impression with the public.
Mineriads Iliescu, along with other figures in the leading
FSN, was allegedly responsible for calling the
Jiu Valley miners to Bucharest on January (
January 1990 Mineriad) and June (
June 1990 Mineriad) 1990 to end the protests of the citizens gathered in
University Square, Bucharest, protests aimed against the ex-Communist leaders of Romania (like himself). The pejorative term for this demonstration was the
Golaniad (from the
Romanian golan, rascal). On 13 June, an attempt of the authorities to remove from the square around 100 protesters, which had remained in the street even after the
May elections had confirmed Iliescu and the FSN, resulted in attacks against several state institutions, such as the Ministry of Interior, the Bucharest Police Headquarters and the National Television. Iliescu issued a call to the Romanian people to come and defend the government, prompting several groups of miners to descend on the capital, armed with wooden clubs and bats. They trashed the
University of Bucharest, some newspaper offices and the headquarters of opposition parties, claiming that they were havens of decadence and immorality – drugs, firearms and munitions, "an automatic typewriter", and fake currency. The June 1990 Mineriad in particular was subject to wide criticism, both domestically and internationally, with the historian
Andrei Pippidi comparing the events to Nazi Germany's
Kristallnacht. Government inquiries later established that the miners were infiltrated and instigated by former
Securitate operatives. In February 1994 a Bucharest court "found two security officers, Colonel Ion Nicolae and warrant officer Corneliu Dumitrescu, guilty of ransacking the house of
Ion Rațiu, a leading figure in the
Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party, during the miners' incursion and stealing $100,000".
King Michael In 1992, three years after the revolution which overthrew the Communist dictatorship, the Romanian government allowed King
Michael I to return to his country for Easter celebrations, where he drew large crowds. In Bucharest, over a million people turned out to see him. Michael's popularity alarmed the government of President Iliescu, so Michael was forbidden to visit Romania again for five years. In 1997, after Iliescu's defeat by Emil Constantinescu, the Romanian Government restored Michael's citizenship and again allowed him to visit the country.
Pardons In December 2001, Iliescu pardoned three inmates convicted for
bribery, including George Tănase, former
Financial Guard head commissioner for
Ialomița County. Iliescu had to revoke Tănase's pardon a few days later due to the media outcry, claiming that "a legal adviser was superficial in analysing the case". Later, the humanitarian reasons invoked in the pardon were contradicted by another medical expert opinion. Another controversial pardon was that of Dan Tartagă, a businessman from
Brașov who, while drunk, had run over and killed two people on a pedestrian crossing. He was sentenced to three years and a half but was pardoned after only a couple of months. Tartagă was later sentenced to a two-year sentence for
fraud. Most controversial of all, on 15 December 2004, a few days before the end of his last term, Iliescu
pardoned 47 convicts, including
Miron Cozma, the leader of the miners during the early 1990s, who had been sentenced in 1999 to 18 years in prison in conjunction with the
September 1991 Mineriad. This has attracted harsh criticism from all Romanian media. Many of the pardoned had been convicted for corruption or other economic crimes, while one had been imprisoned for his involvement in the attempts at suppressing the 1989 Revolution.
Black sites Iliescu was mentioned in the report of the
Council of Europe investigator into illegal activities of the
CIA in Europe,
Dick Marty. He was identified as one of the people who authorised or at least knew about and should have stood accountable for the operation of a
CIA black site at
Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase from 2003 to 2005, in the context of the
war on terror. In April 2015, Iliescu confirmed that he had granted a CIA request for a site in Romania, but was not aware of the nature of the site, describing it as a small gesture of goodwill to an ally in advance of Romania's eventual accession to
NATO. Iliescu further stated that had he known of the intended use of the site, he would certainly not have approved the request. ==Public opinion and legacy==