Gelu Voican Voiculescu

The future politician was born in Bucharest on 8 February 1941, as the son of Dafina Tăslăuanu and geologist Ștefan "Esteban" Voiculescu-Dioști. While his father had peasant origins in rural Oltenia, Dafina's ancestors were members of the social and political elite. His maternal grandfather was Octavian Codru Tăslăuanu, a publisher, political thinker, and activist of the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Also on his mother's side, he is related by blood to the prestigious Sturdza family. His ancestors on that line include a sister of the Moldavian statesman Costache Negri; Gelu's maternal uncles were Michel Sturdza, who had recently served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and, through marriage, the part-Hungarian writer-genealogist . Michel and several other Sturdzas were deeply embedded with the fascist Iron Guard, which had formed the "National Legionary State" of 1940–1941. The boy was reportedly born prematurely as a result of the Guardist rebellion and downfall, which had caused Dafina great distress; Raised into Orthodoxy, Gelu was originally baptized as "Grigore". He explained the name "Voican" as originating with his father's preferred, but unofficial, surname (and ultimately as the given name of a paternal ancestor). During primary school, Gelu was registered with "Voican" as a surname, until Ștefan was informed that they needed to comply with existing name laws. in the Voiculescu family home. According to Voiculescu's own recollections, both his mother and grandmother were themselves pushed into hiding "at the height of Stalinist persecution". Before and after this episode, they taught him to idolize the anti-communist guerrillas (such as Gheorghe Arsenescu, Leon Șușman, and Ion Uță), and he considered joining their ranks. graduated from Bucharest's I. L. Caragiale High School in 1957, then began studying towards an engineering degree at the Petroleum Research Institute (ICP). During his second year there, he was purged as a "reactionary" with "unhealthy social origins" and "contacts with foreign reactionaries". At a larger level, this clampdown corresponded to fears caused by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the corresponding movement in Bucharest. The authorities, who subjected him to criticism sessions that he found to be especially terrifying, also noted his "modernist" paintings and his constantly wearing a cross necklace. ==First arrest==

Voiculescu spent another year as a welder for the Bucharest Drilling Enterprise, Voiculescu worked for the petrochemical industry, prospecting at Videle, and was later allowed to join the research staff at the ICP. After Nicolae Ceaușescu had taken over as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), Voiculescu's politics continued to clash with the regime's agenda—as noted in 2019 by historian Marius Oprea, "he may be regarded as a dissident of sorts." Goran contends that, after the 1970 arrest, the geologist remained "in contact" with Securitate personnel, including Goran's own subordinate, Viorel Tache, who was later "attached" to Voiculescu. He was also passionate about the perennialist scholar René Guénon, and, as a result, contacted Guénonian disciple Vasile Lovinescu. Inspired by Guénon, Voiculescu was then curious about Islamic philosophy, and, as Paleologu reports, became a "great admirer" of Ruhollah Khomeini. ==IPROMIN and rearrest==

For a while, Voiculescu, who owned some 1,200 books in 1985, According to diplomat and literary critic Alexandru Paleologu, Voiculescu was an actual member of Țepeneag's Onirist group of writers, Another author, Dorin Tudoran, encountered Voiculescu during vacations within a larger group of intellectuals, but could not clearly remember whether these were at 2 Mai or on Miron Radu Paraschivescu's property at Vălenii de Munte. The engineer's other new acquaintances were Paul Goma, Eugen Barbu, and Adrian Păunescu. In 1979, Voiculescu married Sanda Voicu, Goma remembered that Voiculescu had been married twice by 1976, and that he and his second wife, whom he does not name, once visited him in Drumul Taberei. This was in mid-1977, at a time when Goma was going public with a letter of protest against Ceaușescu, asking people to sign it. Though Voiculescu later depicted himself as a participant in the movement, Goma denied him the merit, noting that both Voiculescus had "left without saying anything." several commentators agree with him on this point. He pleaded guilty, and accepted a one-and-a-half years term in prison. He was thus spared the more serious, political charge, which carried up to 7 years in jail. and aspiring novelist, who was 18 years his junior. ==Revolutionary events==

Just ahead of the 1989 revolutions, Voiculescu was losing hope that the Eastern bloc would ever be dismantled, and saw communism as a bad idea that would neverthless spread worldwide. He believed that the "so-called capitalistic" Western bloc would fuel communism with exports of grain. Voiculescu also cites Securitate documents purportedly showing that he was due for another arrest. Goma, who watched him on national television from his exile in France, found his story "charmingly naive, like a folk tale", and more readily believed that he had been planted at the forefront as a covert "soldier". While doing his live broadcasts, Voiculescu was introduced to Ion Iliescu, leader of the PCR's reformist wing, whom he understood as Ceaușescu's most credible replacement. For his part, Voiculescu always took objection to claims that Iliescu was being used by the Soviet Union. Though he acknowledged Soviet influence as overwhelming, and as pushing for "a war between the army and Securitate", he associated it with Verdeț and Bujor Sion. In his view, Iliescu was never a "Russophile"; he merely placated Mikhail Gorbachev in order to gain control of the situation, before turning against him. Voiculescu, who argues that the FSN was always "incompatible with communism", also argues that claims of Soviet interference were helped along by a taped phone call, namely one between the FSN and Ferenc Kárpáti, the Hungarian Minister of Defense. Held in Russian, it was immediately misrepresented by the press as a demand for direct Soviet intervention. ==At Ceaușescu's trial==

Voiculescu reportedly sat by Iliescu's side throughout those days, only leaving on 25 December to take part in Ceaușescu's trial and sentencing at Tîrgoviște. The military judge was Colonel (later General) Gică Popa, who decided for the death sentence. Popa later committed suicide, allegedly because he hoped that his own death would persuade Ceaușescu loyalists not to go after his family. One member of Popa's circle suggest that Voiculescu knew about this danger, but did nothing to protect the Popas. The general's sister additionally claimed that Voiculescu had been directly involved in pressuring the judge by carrying a pistol into the improvised courtroom. At Tîrgoviște, Voiculescu was always accompanied by Cerasela Bîrjac Demetrescu—whom he presented as a fellow revolutionary, but who, Florescu reports, was also a former Miliția operative. It also shows him orchestrating the Ceaușescus' initial burial, held without a religious service, in lieu of which he recited the idiomatic phrase: "May the ground be light to you". In January 1996, Voiculescu issued a statement assuring Romanians that the execution had offered Ceaușescu "a dramatic end, not without its tragic grandeur", always preferable to "an old age entrapped by some prison". However, he once admitted that he was moved by Nicolae's tenderness toward his wife, manifested "even as they were facing the firing squad." In 2010, he complained of continouous harassment from those who did not believe that the Ghencea graves housed the real Ceaușescus. ==Gaining power==

on 23 December 1989. Left to right: Dumitru Mazilu, Ion Iliescu, and Petre Roman On the evening of 28 December 1989, Iliescu, as acting head of state (President of the FSN Council), named Voiculescu as one of two Deputy Prime Ministers, seconding Prime Minister Roman. His first appearance in that capacity was at the 29 December funeral of General Vasile Milea, where he and Dumitru Mazilu represented the FSN. His area of expertise and control included the entire mining industry. He ran this department alongside a close friend, the Hungarian Romanian István Király of Baia Mare, whom he called in as his advisor, and for whom he began learning Hungarian. and was thus dispatched on a visit to Egypt, being received by Hosni Mubarak on 28 January 1990. Economist Alexandru D. Albu reports that the mission, which included Roman's Arabist wife Mioara among the regular lobbyists, managed to recover some 250 million United States dollars in merchandise. While Albu praises Voiculescu for his success, he also claims that there was a suspicious "discount" from the 300 million that Egypt had originally owed. At home, Voiculescu was nearly always present at sessions of the Romanian Synod; he was in communication with the Orthodox Patriarch, Teoctist Arăpașu, whose reputation had been tainted by PCR associations, and giving him assurance of Iliescu's protection. Voiculescu was then involved in the conflict opposing the Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches. As a bishop of the latter, Alexandru Todea accused Voiculescu of unfairly promoting the Orthodox agenda. In tandem, the emerging Iliescu regime proceeded to arrested the Securitate's last director, Iulian Vlad. Voiculescu, who was allegedly involved in Vlad's downfall, In addition to gaining custody over the Securitate archives, He defended the UM 0215 as a bulwark against Soviet infiltration, and as staffed by "the Securitate's elite officers", using their talents to compile a list of suspected KGB agents within the PCR nomenklatura. Additionally, he theorized that the Securitate had been framed by the de-communized Land Forces, with army leader Victor Stănculescu creating "terrorists" as a false-flag operation. In his reading, Stănculescu maintained control of the power structures while he purged out the Securitate, while pressuring Iliescu into compliance; he also identified Stănculescu as personally responsible for all victims, including those who had been attributed to Ceaușescu personally. In a 1990 piece, political scientist Dan Pavel referred to Voiculescu as "popular and mysterious". As late as 2017, businessman Lucian Cornescu-Ring, who had since established Romania's Grand Masonic Lodge, was advertising his close relationships with Roman and Voiculescu—but without claiming them as affiliates. ==February riot and Târgu Mureș clashes==

A major political battle came in late January 1990, when the FSN decided to register as a political party and run its own list of candidates in the May elections—thereby positioning itself as a favorite, against the numerically weaker Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚCD). The decision had followed weeks of reassurances from Iliescu, Roman, and sometimes Voiculescu, that such politicization was not on the table. Voiculescu nevertheless did not join the party, defining himself as an independent supporter of its policies. In February, he was sent to deal with protesting soldiers from the Timișoara garrison, who were demanding institutional reforms and an inquiry into Nicolae Militaru's appointment as Defense Minister. According to journalist Gabriela Negreanu, his very presence there showed that Iliescu and Roman did not take the protest seriously. Voiculescu, who "has no executive powers", used convoluted phrases and a "purely stylistic logic" to placate the soldiers. On 18 February, anti-FSN protesters stormed into Victoria Palace, entering Voiculescu's offices and allegedly injuring his guards. By his own account, he managed to talk some of them into non-violent solutions, "which practically saved my life". He spoke of the assailants as belonging to "pressure groups [that] seek to undo the social balance"; the protesters available for questioning identified as independents who resented Roman's string of economic reforms, while the guards claimed that the more violent ones were PNȚCD cadres. Nicolae Manolescu, of the anti-FSN Civic Alliance, was intrigued that Voiculescu's interview was aired on national television, within a succession of images that seemed to depict most protesters as violent. According to Manolescu, most of the 4,000 protesters had been entirely peaceful, suggesting to him that the violence was staged by the FSN. Political scientist Gabriel Andreescu, who was in the crowd, likewise credits the inside-job theory, and sees the UM 0215 as involved. He reports that the break-in was done by "a tiny, shifty character", who then appeared to exchange greetings with a Police colonel. Voiculescu rejects claims that he himself had steered the crowds, and renewed accounts that he was arms, seeing them as "absurd" and "irresponsible". Shortly after, the social conflicts were aggravated by a series of ethnic riots in Târgu Mureș, a city of Hungarian concentration. On 20 March, the new governing body, or Provisional Council of National Unity (CPUN), appointed Voiculescu on the investigative commission, which was supposed to present a detailed report on these events. He traveled to that area on 23 March, immediately overseeing a purge of the CPUN offices in Mureș County—in his speech, he urged delegates to vote in "energetic, authoritative persons", capable of preventing more violence. His probe produced evidence that local Romanian nationalists, organized as the Romanian Hearth Union, were receiving encouragement and stipends from self-exiled members of the Iron Guard. His other focus, that of encouraging negotiations between the two sides, was met with resistance by some local Romanians, whose protest was only non-violent because of a large paratrooper presence. On 26 March 1990, Voiculescu lost control over security forces, which Iliescu organized as the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), with sociologist Virgil Măgureanu as its inaugural director. Historian Doina Pașca Harsanyi argues that his reputation was boosted by the state-owned television, as when the cameras were turned on while a lady from the crowd rushed in to thank him for his work, and by his biography being kept a virtual secret from the general public. On the opening day of electioneering, he and other FSN leaders appeared at a commemoration for the revolution victims, performing Christian rites. This ceremony was also transmitted live by state TV, now seen in opposition circles as a FSN propaganda tool. =="Clitoris" quote and Golaniad clampdown==

In tandem, the FSN had to tackle a massive sit-in protest in Bucharest, called "Golaniad". Voiculescu was among those who spoke out against this new threat, alleging that protesters were paid to engage in criminal acts. The PNȚCD man Liviu Petrina claimed that Voiculescu had threatened to expel from Romania his party's deputy leader, Ion Rațiu. In an interview with Le Figaro, the Deputy Premier declared that the Golaniad was a "paltry travesty" of the revolutionary agenda. The piece became ridiculed at home for also featuring Voiculescu's ideological commitment to perennialism and the "sacred science", as well as his cryptic admittance to "liv[ing] between metaphysics and the clitoris." Voiculescu later explained that he had actually said "catharsis", not clitoris. As author Adrian Mihalache noted in 2002, this appeared more as an excuse, making him seem hesitant; together, the quote and its apparent backpedaling damaged Voiculescu's reputation "even more than his dressing up as Che Guevara in December 1989." Upon first hearing of the interview in 1990, Dorin Tudoran observed that Voiculescu was heading for an existential crisis, since his involvement in the Ceaușescu and in the subsequent political violence could not have brought him peace, and since the sexual aspect of his worldview was "fleeting". As he noted, Voiculescu's bodyguard and likely mistress Cerasela had since quit her job and emigrated. In June 1990, Voiculescu was confirmed as the Senator for Buzău County, elected with the most votes cast in that constituency. Shortly after the count, the authorities began cracking down on Golaniad dissenters. Painter Mircea Bozan, who was detained at this stage, claims that he was also beaten to extract information on others, and that this procedure was personally overseen by Voiculescu (who denies the accusation). Pro-government violence eventually bled into the June 1990 Mineriad—whereby the Jiu Valley miners were brought to Bucharest and proceeded to attack the protesters, using their tools or other makeshift weapons. Trade union leader Miron Cozma, who was eventually prosecuted for his leadership of such squads, named Voiculescu and "two important colonels" as his personal contacts with Iliescu. According to Cozma, Voiculescu personally traveled to Petrila to make sure that the miners were embarking on trains heading for the capital. His account was corroborated by a miner from Vulcan, who saw the Deputy Minister boarding a helicopter, flying over the trains carrying the miners to Bucharest, and flashing the V sign at them. The Deputy Premier admitted to flying into the region at the time, alongside Cazimir Ionescu, but stated that they were there to deescalate, ultimately persuading some 30,000 miners not to follow their colleagues to Bucharest. : miners escorting a captive whom they viewed as engaged in acts of terrorism Several eyewitness accounts identify Voiculescu and Dan Iosif as leading a platoon of paratroopers, and indirectly the miners themselves, into storming the offices of opposition parties. Some witnesses specifically indicate that, on the morning of 14 June, Voiculescu was present at the main building of the PNȚCD, which was being ransacked—an alleged witness to the looting, he never intervened to stop it. Essayist Cătălin Ciolca notes that Voiculescu's public image as an "emperor of the miners" did not prevent him from serving on an official commission that investigated the very violence he was accused of. In late 1990, Voiculescu entered a public debate with Goma, after the latter had questioned his past under communism. His open letter to his critic appeared in România Literară, and marked the first time in history that a Romanian citizen published portions of their own Securitate file. In the aftermath, Voiculescu was defended by the staff writer at Contemporanul magazine, who observed that Goma was being oversuspicious. ==September Mineriad==

During late 1990, Sanda Voicu, who had settled in Southern France, posed nude in Lui magazine, which also published her letter to her former husband, asking him to retire from politics. By 1991, Voiculescu's political controversies were also interfering with his scholarship. His Guénon biography was due to be issued at Humanitas, but then scrapped. According to Voiculescu, the publishers had come to regard him with the disdain of "false elitism". Tensions were also mounting inside the FSN's governing alliance, opposing Roman's cosmopolitan faction to the resurgent nationalists. The most outspoken of the latter were grouped into the Greater Romania Party (PRM), which, under Corneliu Vadim Tudor, was Iliescu's conditional ally. In June 1991, Voiculescu reacted against the PRM's radical stances with an article in Cotidianul, attacking Vadim personally: "[Vadim's] immorality is due to a strong psychological derangement and is currently being studied by some psychiatrists, who suppose him to be paranoid." Shortly after, Voiculescu and Păunescu assisted Győző Hajdu in establishing Együtt–Împreună, a non-governmental organization that supported good relations between Hungarians and Romanians. In late May 1991, speaking from the Senate rostrum, Voiculescu demanded that criminal proceedings be initiated against Eugen Barbu's Europa magazine, which had published content that he and others identified as violently antisemitic. That publication later put his name on a list of enemies, noting that, while not Jewish, he stood out as a "Jewified psycopath". A new Mineriad in September 1991 was directly aimed at toppling Roman. In October, while the Roman cabinet was still holding on to power, Voiculescu's theories regarding the events were amply and repeatedly covered by TVR 1, leading writer Eugen Uricaru to argue that his narrative was being pushed as the official one. Roman and his 2002 interviewer Elena Ștefoi gave backing to Voiculescu's account, in particular when it came to its depiction of Roman as an economic liberal. They also agreed with the Deputy Premier regarding the supposed duplicity of opposition groups. The PNȚCD had fraternized with the miners over shared resentments, while the National Liberal Party had even considered joining the post-Roman governmental arc. Voiculescu also went on public record with claims that, at its core, the Mineriad had been organized by an exiled millionaire, Iosif Constantin Drăgan, and his "left-nationalist" co-conspirators. He alleged that their original intent was to murder Roman and a handful of Hungarian Romanian community leaders. He described an underground paramilitary group, named by other witnesses as the "Legion of Justice", implying that Gheorghe Cazacov was its commander. He claimed that some of the money to be used for subversion came from the organizers of the Soviet hardliners' coup, trafficked by them through Cazacov's import–export firm and the Novosti news agency. Cazacov, who denied knowing any other of the supposed conspirators, Drăgan issued his own immediate response, alleging that such claims could only be explained by Voiculescu's being either "demented" or "precociously senile", and initiating a lawsuit for libel. As reported by Izvestias Viktor Volodin, the SRI and other officials also had "restrained reactions", seemingly indicating that they did not believe Voiculescu; On 4 October 1991, Voiculescu was barred by his nominal colleagues in the FSN from joining a senatorial investigation committee. Roman was finally deposed, with Iliescu's approval, in mid-October—the beginning of a FSN schism which eventually saw Iliescu forming his own, more dominant, Democratic Front of National Salvation (FDSN). Activist Nica Leon claims that, following their ouster, Roman and an "extremely shady" Voiculescu were for a while secretly allied with each other. Leon recounts that the two men and a government insider, Caius Traian Dragomir, were trying to establish a think tank "for intoxicating public opinion." In March 1992, Voiculescu announced that he would resign from the Senate, prompting speculation that Cazacov could now sue. Măgureanu regarded such actions as literal theft, but indicated that he would not pursue a lifting of Voiculescu's parliamentary immunity. By November 1992, Voiculescu had reconciled with Iulian Vlad, at a time when the latter was facing trial for illegally detaining people in Securitate custody. As Cristoiu noted, there was a "great campaign" to clear Vlad's name, and the former Deputy Premier agreed to participate in it, including by sending pro-Securitate opinion pieces to be published by Cristoiu's Expres Magazin. ==In Tunis==

Upon resigning as senator in March 1992, Voiculescu became Romania's ''chargé d'affaires'' in Tunisia (full ambassador from 1994); His relations with the FDSN were still tense in December 1992: the group's Radu Timofte, who presided upon the Senate Committee on National Security, described both him and Vadim Tudor as actively engaged in misinforming the public and destabilizing Romania. The Tunisian mission was interpreted by political commentators as a soft exile, its non-definitive nature indicative of the fact that Voiculescu had compromising info on the regime's inner workings. Novelist and political writer Mircea Mihăieș added his view that the Iliescu regime was entering a phase of absolute power, eliminating diversity of thought, and getting rid of "executors" such as Voiculescu and Stănculescu—after having first alienated "ideologues" such as Popescu-Dumnezeu. Doru Botoiu, columnist at Timișoara, contrarily believed that Voiculescu had been pushed out of the FSN circle of power and sent "somewhere in Africa" because of pressures from other segments of the governing alliance. These were the PRM and the PSM, who allegedly wanted to remove anyone associated with Roman. Voiculescu's main interest was in improving Palestine–Romania relations, through near-permanent contacts with Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization. As such, he organized state visits to Bucharest by both Faisal Husseini and Yasser Arafat. At the time, journalist Dan Radu proposed that Iliescu was performing a "tightrope act", using Voiculescu in placating the Arab states while engaging in a détente with Israel. From Tunis, the former Deputy Premier sent letters to be published in Păunescu's Totuși Iubirea, expressing his ongoing admiration for the poet. In January 1993, he explained that he and Păunescu together stood against both the "Russophiles" and the "anti-Securitate maniacs", and as such that they were being pushed to the margins. Voiculescu also continued to monitor SRI activity from abroad, accusing Măgureanu of having slacked off, particularly when it came to counterespionage. By 1994, he was explicit in associating Măgureanu with a pro-Soviet faction that had supposedly obtained Iliescu's compliance. Around then, the opposition Civic Alliance Party asked for a probe into the circumstances of Voiculescu's diplomatic debut, suggesting that he had never been vetted by Parliament. Voiculescu was called up from his service during the various investigations of the 1989 events, appearing before a senatorial committee on 30 May 1994; probed by the PNȚCD's Valentin Gabrielescu, he gave an hour-by-hour account of his whereabouts on 21 December 1989, which came to be noted for both its revelations and its inconsistencies. Voiculescu followed up in 1996 by curating a collection of Tăslăuanu's essays, selected for their advocacy of the Paneuropean Union. It also included Voiculescu's preface, which justified his grandfather's lifelong conflict with the Brătianu family, in terms that cultural sociologist Zigu Ornea sees as unfair. Wishing to carry on as ambassador, Voiculescu declined to run in the general elections in November 1996, The elections witnessed a sweep by the PNȚCD-led Democratic Convention (CDR). Its candidate, Emil Constantinescu, also won the presidential race against the incumbent Iliescu. Voiculescu quit his post on 19 November, Voiculescu himself noted that he had wanted to "rally with the losing camp", rather than be forced to witness a mass recall of diplomats. ==PDSR recruitment==

Declaring himself a figure of the "extra-parliamentary opposition", Voiculescu joined Iliescu's newly formed Party of Social Democracy (PDSR) in early 1997, noting that he had only did so to be by Iliescu's side, while saluting his commitment to "internal stability and a balanced foreign policy". Voican spearheaded the effort to defeat the PNȚCD legislation in agriculture, accusing that group of favoring the interests of landowners and corporate farming against smallholders, and as such of destroying its own "Peasantist" brand. Voiculescu also censured the PNȚCD from an anti-Catholic position, seeing the party as obedient toward the Greek Catholic hierarchy. At the PDSR national conference of June 1997, he declared that Greek Catholicism only existed as a consequence of forced conversion among Transylvania's Orthodox believers, and that the state should not tolerate either the building or reclamation of any Catholic village churches. In early 1998, an FRD team comprising Voiculescu, Iliescu, Theodorescu, Antonie Iorgovan and Nicolae Cajal petitioned government not to bestow automatic citizenship on the deposed King, Michael I, suggesting that doing so would violate the 1991 constitution. Also then, Voiculescu went public with his claim that President Constantinescu's son Dragoș had been involved in illegal trafficking at Otopeni Airport. Constantinescu Jr initiated a lawsuit for libel. Voiculescu had to publicly apologize and retract his statement, upon which the lawsuit was dropped. Voiculescu spent some of his time trying to defend the UM 0215 from being dismantled by the CDR's Interior Minister, Gavril Dejeu. On 28 March, at a time when Romania was taking NATO's side in its bombing of Yugoslavia, he led the Association of Christian Orthodox Students in their protest march through Bucharest. In one of his TV appearances to discuss the crisis, he argued that Russia had registered a moral victory, in that it had made America "show its true colors". With Theodorescu, Alexandru Mironov, George Pruteanu and Dan Zamfirescu, he signed a letter of support for Slobodan Milošević and his handling of the Kosovo War. Present at the Yugoslav embassy for Constitution Day (27 April 1999), he toasted to the anti-globalist resistance, now stating his belief in "the national idea". By mid-2000, Voiculescu and Vadim Tudor were regular guests of Păunescu's nightime program on Tele7ABC, where they usually tackled issues pertaining to the revolution and the legacy of communism. In the general elections of November 2000, Iliescu faced an unexpected challenge from Vadim Tudor, who entered the second round of the presidential race. During the debates that followed, the PRM leader emulated the CDR, exposing his rival's associations with Voiculescu and other figures whom right-wing voters saw as corrupt or shady. Once Theodorescu had entered the parliamentary race as a PDSR candidate, Voiculescu and the FRD were accused of campaigning for Iliescu, but denied that this was true. Vadim was defeated in the second round, and Iliescu returned as head of state. Voiculescu was reportedly by his side during the voting, the count, and throughout election night. For a while, he was a credible contender for director of Foreign Intelligence, but was supposedly overruled from any post of importance by Adrian Năstase, the Premier-designate. ==Moroccan mission and IRRD==

On 1 March 2001, Iliescu made Voiculescu his ambassador in Morocco. Meanwhile, his revolutionary career was again being formally scrutinized, this time by the military prosecutor Dan Voinea. In February 2004, after revelations that the Ceaușescus' file was missing from the archives, Voinea decided to retry the case, asking the 1989 winesses, Voiculescu included, to show up for questioning. Voiculescu regarded this as a political decision, claiming that Voinea had broken the law in ordering the file reopened. Additionally, Iliescu secured Voiculescu and his own privileges as fighters in the revolution by having them signed into one of his final presidential decrees. Another such act inducted Voiculescu into the Order of Victory of the 1989 Revolution—one of several recipients described by investigative reporter Răzvan Savaliuc as Iliescu's cronies. In late January 2005, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, recalled Voiculescu to Bucharest. A month later, Ungureanu also publicized a list of diplomats that he viewed as servile and incompetent, which included Voiculescu's name. In May, upon his return to Bucharest, Voiculescu with Roman appeared at a TVR 1 rountable, discussing his take on the Golaniad. The Civic Alliance's Sorin Ilieșiu criticized this editorial choice, arguing that the two alleged culprits had been allowed to monopolize the show with their own interpretation. As part of her legal bid to revisit her parents' execution and verify their material remains, Zoia Ceaușescu asked for an exhumation, and called for several witnesses, including Voiculescu, to take the stand. A court struck down both her demands in September 2005. During March 2006, military prosecutors, who had reopened the case regarding the events of June 1990, subpoenaed him and some other 20 suspects. He stated his innocence, again pointing to the Soviets as the interested party. Voiculescu resigned from the IRRD in August 2006, when that institution's public mission was being called into question. At the time, he was active within Florentin Scalețchi's Organization for the Defense of Human Rights (OADO), which controversially reunited former dissidents, one convicted sex-offender, and a Securitate colonel. Upon Scalețchi's arrest on suspicion of influence peddling, Voiculescu took over as OADO's director. Also in 2006, the former Securitate cadre Liviu Turcu published a list of his former agents, nominating those who had successfully entered the political scene after 1989; Voiculescu was one of the prominent names. He denied the charges as a smear campaign; Oprea claims that he could only do so because, during his time in government, "he had all the time in the world to destroy his own [Securitate] file", which would have been handed down to him by Goran. Voiculescu was an observer at a Primăverii precinct for the PSD-backed referendum of May 2007, aiming to impeach the right-wing President Traian Băsescu. He was also recruited by a "Think Tank of the Romanian Left", established in early 2009 by Iliescu and Năstase with other PSD figures—at a time when their old-generation faction was being marginalized by party leader Mircea Geoană. Voiculescu's comments on international politics featured renewed criticism of NATO and of its missile defense system, which he regarded as having turned Romania into a legitimate target for Russian retaliation; he also derided Mikheil Saakashvili as NATO's proxy in the Russo-Georgian War. ==Old age and prosecution==

Almost exactly after the 2009 ruling, voices within the PSD suggested that Voiculescu could take over as the Secretary of State for Revolutionaries in the First Boc Cabinet. This in turn sparked a protest by the National Revolutionaries' Bloc. The issue of his pre-1989 connections was revisited by Gregorian Bivolaru, a Romanian yogi, who alleged that Voiculescu had informed on him before his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1984. Voiculescu admitted only to being present as the Securitate was arresting Bivolaru, and to pranking its agents with purpusefully outlandish statements. Voiculescu was censured in the press when, in February 2011, he stated that he was entitled to 750,000 Euro in compensation for his communist-era imprisonment, under the provisions of a law that provided reparations for Securitate victims. One of his critics, Lazăr Lădariu, declared his indignation at what he perceived as "slippery maneuvers" against "Romania herself", reminding Voiculescu that his prosecution was a common-law one, and also repeating Bivolaru's allegations against him. By July 2016, during a nominally technocratic Cioloș Cabinet, he had been made counselor of the state minister for revolutionary issues, despite continued opposition from his peers. In February 2015, after the European Court of Human Rights had ruled that Romania needed to investigate in full the crimes of the Mineriads, Prosecutor General Tiberiu Nițu asked President Klaus Iohannis for approval to begin a criminal investigation, with Iliescu, Roman and Voiculescu named as potential culprits. In April 2018, Nițu's successor Augustin Lazăr, having concluded that there was no power vacuum between Ceaușescu and Iliescu, and therefore that all loss of human life in the interval had to be accounted for by those in government at the time, approached Iohannis for an authorization to initiate criminal proceedings against the same individuals; Iohannis gave the go-ahead. Voiculescu's role in television broadcasts during the revolution was cited as a central piece of evidence that the FSN had resorted to "diversionary" instigation; on 15 May, he was formally charged with "crimes against humanity". Voiculescu viewed himself as targeted by electioneering and political vendettas. In March 2018, On 22 December, Voiculescu and his wife A man was stopped for questioning as the alleged perpetrator; his weapon was identified as a cane. The incident prompted a blog post by the former Prime Minister and PSD eminence Năstase, who claimed it as illustrative for the "normal Romania" being constructed by Iohannis. According to Năstase, Iohannis was personally invested in erasing all trace of left-wing participation in the revolution, as a step toward totalitarian democracy. In August 2022, both Voiculescu and Iliescu were again charged with "crimes against humanity", on orders from Prosecutor General Gabriela Scutea. This referred to their handling of national affairs between 22 and 30 December 1989, when there were "857 deaths, 2,382 injuries [and] 585 cases of detainment" directly attributable to the FSN leadership, accused of having encouraged "generalized friendly fire"; Voiculescu was personally indicated as responsible for misinforming public opinion in his televised addresses. Iliescu in particular fought the charges, and his lawyers presented their case before the High Court. In 2024, its magistrates ruled that the dossier had technical irregularities, and that the military prosecutor could either withdraw it or presenting it as such to a regular court. In March 2025, the office of the prosecutor announced that it would still seek sentencing for the group. The case against Iliescu was closed with the former president's death in August. Voiculescu attended the funeral, deploring the loss of "a great statesman", with whom he had had a "cordial and natural relationship." In April 2026, the Mineriad prosecution was struck down by the High Court, which demanded that the evidence be reexamined. ==References==