France's Court of Cassation has rejected the appeal of Paul Philip of Romania against the decision ordering his extradition to serve his sentence, former Justice Minister Radu Marinescu announced on Wednesday.

'France's Court of Cassation rejected Paul of Romania's appeal against the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal, which had decided to hand him over to Romania to serve his sentence. It is a great success for the Romanian judicial authorities, the Ministry of Justice, and the team that worked professionally on international judicial cooperation during my term. After several successive refusals to hand him over, we persevered, the Court of Justice of European Union was notified, which ruled in favor of Romania, we returned with the request for handover, and in the end we triumphed definitively! Paul of Romania joins the gallery of notorious convicts or criminally prosecuted individuals brought to Romania during my term,' Radu Marinescu wrote on his Facebook account.

Paul Philip of Romania, aged 77, was accused of collaborating with an organised crime group since 2006 to acquire properties he claimed as heir to the royal family.

He was finally sentenced in Romania in 2020 to 3 years and 4 months in prison, with execution, in the case of the illegal restitution of the Royal Farm of Baneasa, for influence peddling and complicity. A total of 18 people were convicted in this case, and the damage to the Romanian state was estimated at at least 145 million euros.

Following the conviction, the extradition request made by Romania was rejected by courts in France and Malta. In the case of France, the Paris Court of Appeal considered that the arrest warrant was 'disproportionate'.

However, this verdict was later overturned by the French Court of Cassation, as the Court of Appeal had not specified, among other things, 'whose fundamental right would have been affected by the execution of the arrest warrant.'

Last month, the Paris Court of Appeal finally ordered the extradition to Romania, a decision after which Prince Paul's legal team appealed.

'This is an absolutely unprecedented procedural situation,' argued Dorothee Feliers, one of the lawyers on this team. 'The decision you are about to take will create jurisprudence and will probably have implications beyond our national borders,' she told the judges in the trial.

The same lawyer argued in particular that extradition could not be implemented because the 'legal situation' of her client had not changed, namely that there were still no guarantees that Paul of Romania would be able to appeal against his conviction, nor that, if he were to end up in detention, he would be held in dignified conditions.

The prosecutor requested the rejection of this appeal, arguing that these risks had already been taken into account by the Court of Appeal. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Mihai Stoica; EN - writing by: Bogdan Gabaroi)

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