Police search Botoșani county hospital over alleged medication theft and unearned pay

Six searches at the county hospital

Police from the Economic Crime Investigation Service of the Botoșani County Police Inspectorate executed six home search warrants on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, at the Botoșani County Emergency Hospital, which is known locally as the Mavromati hospital. The searches are part of the national operation JUPITER, coordinated by the prosecutor's office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice together with the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police. A prosecutor from the Botoșani Judecătoria office is supervising the criminal case, which covers embezzlement, abuse of office, intellectual forgery and the disclosure of information not intended for publicity. Local press reported that officers also checked an ambulance parked in the hospital courtyard and compared the medication found inside with the purchase registers.

Delia Nenișcu, spokesperson for the Botoșani County Police Inspectorate, described the operation in a statement.

“At this moment six search warrants are being executed at a medical unit in Botoșani municipality.”

What investigators allege

Investigators suspect that medical staff removed special-regime medication from the hospital over the past two years, which police place in the period 2024 to 2026. According to the suspicion, the drugs were recorded in the files of patients arriving at the emergency admissions unit even though those patients never received them. Police also allege that some medication was taken out of circulation so that the hospital could justify new purchases from firms it had approved.

A separate strand of the case concerns pay. Police say salary entitlements for weekly rest days were paid to employees who did not work those days, and the people under investigation are alleged to have helped those payments go through. Mediafax reported that timesheets showed colleagues present on rest days when they had not worked. Investigators are checking attendance records, the documents behind the payments and who drew up or approved them.

Minister's response

Health Minister Alexandru Rogobete said he had been informed about the operation a few days beforehand, but the information was classified, so he did not discuss it publicly. He said he expected the responsible state institutions to finish their work. He added that the Control Body and the State Sanitary Inspection would also be sent to provide additional data to prosecutors.

“The information was classified, so we did not talk about it. We knew this was going to happen.”

Rogobete also pointed to a similar situation at IOB, where he said the same kind of problem existed a few years earlier. He promised to act quickly at any hospital where information of this kind reaches the ministry or where such situations are found.

Earlier investigations at the same hospital

Mediafax reported that in 2023 prosecutors carried out almost 100 searches at the Mavromati hospital, the Botoșani County Council and the PSD Botoșani party office. Those searches concerned alleged fraud in competitions and examinations for vacant posts at the hospital during 2018 to 2023. According to the same report, the current operation is therefore not the first criminal inquiry to examine this hospital. The current file concerns different alleged conduct, namely medication theft and pay for rest days.