Vlad-Cristian Soare removed as Romania’s ONJN President

• Vlad-Cristian Soare was removed as president of ONJN, Romania’s gambling regulator, on 21 August 2026, with no reason given.
• Caretaker prime minister Ilie Bolojan immediately named Valentin-Ioan Tomescu, a regional control official from Constanța, as his replacement.
• The move follows two separate bribery cases inside ONJN this summer, involving founding president Odeta Nestor and deputy director-general Ana-Maria Badea.

Vlad-Cristian Soare no longer runs Romania’s gambling regulator. Caretaker prime minister Ilie Bolojan removed him from the presidency of ONJN on 21 August 2026, replacing him within hours with Valentin-Ioan Tomescu, a regional control official from Constanța. Soare says he was never told why.

Statement on LinkedIn

Soare confirmed the move in a lengthy LinkedIn post the same evening, publishing what he called the results of his mandate rather than responding to the decision itself.

His removal and Tomescu’s appointment were signed the same day, under Decizia nr. 283/2026 and Decizia nr. 284/2026, and published in Romania’s Official Gazette.

Vlad-Cristian Soare, former President of ONJN, wrote on LinkedIn:

“Today I was dismissed from the position of President of ONJN without being told the reasons behind the decision. I am publishing below the results of my mandate, 25 April 2025 to 21 August 2026.”

Bolojan’s office has not published any explanation for the change. Soare’s cabinet director, Ovidiu Alexei, also stepped down that week, praising his former boss’s integrity in a separate statement.

A reform tally

In the same post, Soare listed the enforcement record built over almost 16 months: roughly 1,300 unlicensed websites blacklisted, 11,000 control actions, around 10 million lei in fines, more than 70 licences revoked and over 300 confiscated gaming devices.

He also pointed to two court wins against Polymarket, the prediction market platform ONJN barred in late 2025, and said Kalshi was blocked on similar grounds, positioning Romania among the first jurisdictions worldwide to act against prediction markets.

His first-year activity report, published in April, had already detailed much of this enforcement push. Soare said the market had consolidated under his watch, from close to 60,000 gaming devices and more than 200 licensed organisers down to roughly 23,000 devices and fewer than 100 organisers.

The “Jackpot” case

Soare’s dismissal statement addressed the corruption cases that have dogged ONJN directly. He wrote that the institution began to “clean itself up from within” during his mandate, pointing to leadership changes in the control and monitoring departments and internal investigations he ordered himself.

Vlad-Cristian Soare wrote:

“This year’s DNA investigation into ONJN is a consequence of serious breaches that were incompatible with the direction I wanted.”

The remark traces back to the so-called “Jackpot” case. In June, founding ONJN president Odeta Nestor was arrested after a Bulgarian national allegedly promised €100,000 to secure a favourable outcome on a compliance check tied to a jackpot payout worth more than €1 million, with the money allegedly routed through Nestor to ONJN Secretary General Narcis Godeanu.

Bucharest Tribunal ordered her into pre-trial detention on 17 June; the Court of Appeal replaced that with house arrest on 29 June, pending trial. A bribery case against Bucharest Mayor Ciprian Ciucu was later disjoined from the same DNA file, though the alleged conduct itself concerns unrelated construction permits from his time running Sector 6, not gambling regulation. Ciucu denies wrongdoing and remains under judicial control.

A second probe

A separate case followed in July. Anti-corruption prosecutors searched ONJN’s Bucharest headquarters on 29 July, and deputy director-general Ana-Maria Badea, who ran ONJN’s Gambling Authorisation Directorate, was detained the same day.

Prosecutors allege she received a total of €2,500 between December 2025 and May 2026, both directly and through her husband, from representatives of gambling companies seeking faster approval of new games and re-authorisations. Two ONJN inspectors from a separate control department were placed under judicial control in the same case over smaller alleged payments.

The searches came weeks after a Court of Accounts audit found an estimated 149.48 million lei (roughly €30 million) in prejudice for 2024 alone, on top of an earlier audit that had flagged potential unpaid liabilities of between RON 3.3 billion and 4.3 billion for 2019 to 2023, the same failures that triggered Soare’s own appointment in the first place.

Tomescu takes charge

Tomescu’s rise carries its own irony. Romanian outlet Stiripesurse reports he previously headed ONJN’s central Control directorate before Soare’s own reshuffle sent him to run the south-east territorial service in Constanța, the same leadership change Soare cited as evidence of his clean-up effort. He now returns to take Soare’s old job entirely.

Romanian outlet PS News has also reported alleged ties between Tomescu and Alexandru Olea, a Constanța-based gambling operator, and Gabriel Vlase, head of Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service, citing reporting first published by DNAMedia in February. Neither ONJN nor the government has commented on the claims.

Bolojan’s office has not explained the change publicly, and it remains unclear if the ongoing DNA investigations played any role in the decision. Soare closed his own statement by saying the results of his mandate “remain public” for people to judge.