Bring Them Down

"Pune-i la pamant" (Bring Them Down) is a song by La Familia (The Family - a Romanian hip-hop band) which was released in 2005, the same year when the DNA (National Anti-corruption Directorate) was created by Monica Macovei and Daniel Morar was named the chief of this agency. They immediately started investigating important corruption cases (not small fishes like the former anti-corruption agency used to do). I remember listening to this song in my car, together with the news of corruption investigations by DNA. I was wondering at that time if they would manage to finalize those cases and get some big fishes in jail. Ten years after it turns out they just did that big time: 13 former ministers (including one former prime-minister), countless members of the parliament, mayors (from all political parties), judges, prosecutors, police and army officers, university professors, physicians, media moguls, soccer referees and business men that got rich from deals with the government, all of them convicted for corruption and serving time in jail. Probably they didn't totally destroy the "mafia" system that took over Romania after the fall of communism, but DNA (one of the most trusted institutions in Romania today) scared them badly for sure. And they will continue to do so for the next years as they now target also confiscating the wealth that cannot be proven to come from licit activities. So, let's listen this song again, from a new perspective :)

UPDATE: two articles appeared in the international press today covering the activity of National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) from Romania. Here is the one on BBC and here the one on The Economist. I'm not sure if they read this post before, I don't see any reference to hip-hop there :)