Police Detain Romanian
National Library Director
The director of the National Library of Romania was detained for 24 hours December 9 on charges that he illegally sold photocopies of an 8th-century manuscript owned by the library, defrauding the state of some $1.5 million in revenue.
Dan Erceanu, who has served as director since 1997, was accused of selling 333 copies of the Codex Aureus, a Carolingian gold-letter manuscript of two Gospels, for 28,000 Euros ($28,500) apiece. The facsimiles were apparently made when the document was on loan to a museum in the German state of Hesse, which later sold the reproduction rights to a Swiss publisher.
Televiziunea Romana also announced that Minister of Culture Razvan Theodorescu had personally demoted Erceanu because of the criminal charges. However, the Romanian Press Review reported December 13 that Erceanu was released because authorities lacked sufficient evidence to issue an arrest warrant. His charge was subsequently reduced to complicity in a criminal act.
Erceanu’s lawyer rejected all charges, saying that the manuscript was copied before Erceanu became director, the Associated Press reported December 10. The codex is now kept at the library’s Batthyaneum branch in the Transylvanian town of Alba Iulia.
The investigation seems to be part of Romania’s recent crackdown on official corruption. However, the Bucharest Adevarul newspaper claims the case is political since Erceanu had previously resisted official attempts to move part of the library’s collections outside the city.
Posted December 16, 2002.
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