Second bribery probe hits Romania’s gambling office

• Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) searched the Bucharest headquarters of gambling regulator ONJN on 29 July, targeting four internal officials over suspected bribery.
• Prosecutors describe the case as separate from the case against former ONJN president Odeta Nestor, who faces unproven bribery allegations dating to June.
• ONJN president Vlad-Cristian Soare confirmed the raid and pledged cooperation, as the regulator presses ahead with a separate consultation on tighter compliance standards.

Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) searched the Bucharest headquarters of the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) on Wednesday, 29 July, in a bribery investigation touching the regulator’s own staff.

The probe targets four officials from ONJN’s Control and Authorisation departments, according to ONJN president Vlad-Cristian Soare, who confirmed the searches and said the institution is cooperating fully with prosecutors.

Documents seized, questions ahead

DNA prosecutors carried out the searches on Wednesday morning, according to Libertatea, citing judicial sources. Documents and other evidence were seized for analysis, with witness interviews expected to follow at DNA headquarters.

Prosecutors have not yet disclosed the identities of the four officials involved, the amounts allegedly changing hands, or the specific decisions the suspected bribes were meant to influence.

Shadow of an unproven case

Wednesday’s raid lands roughly a month after ONJN’s most politically charged case in years.

On 17 June, Bucharest Tribunal ordered Odeta Nestor, ONJN’s founding president, into 30-day pre-trial detention over an alleged scheme to bribe ONJN Secretary General Narcis Godeanu to bury a compliance check tied to a jackpot payout of more than €1 million awarded to an operator in March 2023.

Nestor has not been convicted, and the allegations against her remain unproven; Bucharest’s Court of Appeal has since revoked the house-arrest measure that followed her detention. The same file produced a spin-off bribery charge against Bucharest Mayor Ciprian Ciucu, unrelated to gambling regulation itself, which he denies.

Prosecutors describe Wednesday’s search as a distinct case from the Nestor file, though it extends scrutiny well beyond the regulator’s former leadership and into its current operational staff.

A rulebook tightens anyway

The new raid comes as ONJN works through the fallout of a Court of Accounts audit, which found an estimated prejudice of 149.48 million lei (roughly €30 million) for 2024 alone, citing payment discrepancies, gross gaming revenue manipulation and a lack of real-time monitoring at the regulator until 2025.

An earlier audit had separately flagged potential unpaid liabilities of between RON 3.3 billion and 4.3 billion for 2019 to 2023.

Soare, who took over the presidency in April 2025, has used the findings to justify an institutional shake-up, reporting more than 11,000 inspections, over 300 blacklisted websites and €2.7 million in fines in his first-year results.

That agenda has continued in parallel with the corruption cases: ONJN opened a public consultation on 3 July covering minimum standards for game rules and stricter controls on test accounts and demo play.

Wider implications

A second bribery investigation inside the space of two months, this time reaching into ONJN’s own compliance functions, tests how far Soare’s reform record can insulate the regulator from questions about its internal integrity.

Operators watching Romania’s licensing environment now face a regulator simultaneously tightening the rulebook and investigating its own enforcement staff, a combination that is likely to keep parliamentary and public attention fixed on ONJN through the rest of the year.